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.
Oppose (as creator of the article). As I wrote in Talk:Abacus Data to contest the initial nominiation as a speedy:
Mentioning that this company's polls and surveys are cited by Canadian news media (Google shows many examples) is an implicit assertion of importance. In addition, polls by this organization, among a number of others, are cited in Wikipedia articles such as New Brunswick general election, 2010, as well as Ontario general election, 2011, and 42nd Canadian federal election. Basically, I created this article to replace redlinks there with bluelinks. An organization that is notable enough to be a source of citations within other Wikipedia articles is probably notable enough to have at least its own stub article. This doesn't come close to meeting the requirements for speedy deletion, it would need to go to AfD if you wish to pursue it.
Although it is a recently-created small company founded by a person under 30, this does not in itself disqualify it from notability. A Google search on "Abacus Data" (in quotes) returns a sizeable number of hits. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Side point re turning red links into blue links and so on: except in very limited circumstances, polls should not be directly cited in articles because polls are primary sources -- though references, in secondary sources, to poll results can often be used, though with caution. EEng (talk) 20:46, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete So good, as you suggested we're now at AfD. Unfortunately, being cited by Wikipedia is positively useless in establishing notability. Citing of its polls by news sources, without discussion of the company itself by those sources, is only slightly less useless, but nonetheless useless. The company's own "Media" page [1] seems to have nothing but pages and pages of the same -- long articles which begin "A new survey from Ottawa-based Abacus Data finds..." or, somewhere in the middle, say "The new Abacus Data poll, released Friday afternoon, indicates that..." but nowhere else mention Abacus. That the company itself doesn't list any coverage of itself is the best evidence possible of non-existence (nonexistence of the coverage I mean -- the company certainly exists). EEng (talk) 17:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Polling firms are a bit unusual in that nearly all media coverage about them involves discussing their poll results; very little is about the company itself, and usually only policy wonks or political insiders will care about the companies. I have found one article profiling the company at The Hill Times, but such profiles are hard to pick out from an endless stream of search page results discussing polls themselves. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 17:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are misinterpreting WP:NOTABILITY, which says: "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material." (emphasis mine). So a news story about a poll, in a major publication, which mentions the company in the lede and has a paragraph or two of quotes and analysis from the company CEO, represents coverage of the company even though the topic of the article is about the poll and not the company itself. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 18:30, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, it's you who misunderstand. No matter how you slice it, A company...is notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in secondary sources. Such sources must be reliable, and independent of the subject (WP:CORP -- which I suggest you read carefully). That, as you correctly point out, the company need not be the main topic of the source material just means that it's OK if e.g. the title of the source is "Five Polling Companies Reshaping Politics" instead of e.g. "Abacus Corp. Is the New Go-To Company When Polls are Needed" (I just made those up). And there's no relaxation of the in-depth coverage requirement for companies which, because of what they do, wouldn't normally get much coverage. No coverage = no notability (and by the way, no coverage = there's no way to write more than a stub anyway, so that's another reason there can't/shouldn't be an article). Maybe if you go carefully through the company's Media pages (linked above) you'll find the right kind of coverage -- I certainly didn't look at it all. EEng (talk) 18:54, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I just realized you did say you found a profile in Hill Times -- that would help, though please note that A single independent source is almost never sufficient for demonstrating the notability of an organization.EEng (talk) 18:59, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We disagree about what "coverage" means. Reporting on a company's activities or work is coverage; you are known by what you do as much as what you "are". This is particularly true of companies, which are rarely known to be flamboyant or "famous for being famous" à la Paris Hilton; companies are pretty much defined by what they do. As WP:CORP states, Notable means "worthy of being noted" or "attracting notice." When entire newspaper articles in major national newspapers are written, on many separate occasions, for the sole purpose of reporting on some work your company has released, then you have attracted notice. WP:CORP further seeks "verifiable evidence that the organization or product has attracted the notice of reliable sources" (emphasis mine); elsewhere it ways "Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability." and "No organization is considered notable except to the extent that independent sources demonstrate that it has been noticed by people outside of the organization." In several separate places, WP:CORP asks for "attracting notice", "being noticed" and "receiving attention"; there is no requirement that the notice and attention has to be specifically in the form of writing a profile about you, rather than reporting on your work, activities, and products. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 20:57, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: This page about a September 2011 conference organized by the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association may help informally establish notability, in that the company is treated as a peer to the more established Canadian polling and market research companies Harris-Decima, Ekos, Environics, Leger Marketing, Ipsos Reid, Angus Reid Public Opinion. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 18:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I have to agree with P.T. that stories mentioning Abacus as the source of poll data show *some* notability in that the news organization used that firm, but as per EEng, I have to say that I give such stories much less weight. However, I actually checked the google news results, and a good number of them were, in fact, about Abacus Data and not their polls. Ok, I checked more closely, and there is also Abacus that Doubleclick merged with and Abacus Data Systems, which are NOT the same company... Company (just) meets the GNG. The Steve 07:54, 10 March 2012 (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.