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. Editors are encouraged to work on improving this article. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:06, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ferratum[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Ferratum should be deleted or reduced to a stub. Almost all of the content contained in this article is not sourced or inappropriately sourced, and a proper cleanup based on available information from reliable sources would reduce it to a stub.

(1) This article contains many unreliable sources (WP:RS).

Reference 1: Broken

Reference 2: A press release from the company itself, breaking WP:RS

Reference 3: A press release from the company itself, breaking WP:RS

Reference 5: Not a source, breaking WP:RS

Reference 6: Broken

(2) There are very few reliable sources that could potentially be added to clean this up.

Further searches on Google, Google News, and Google Scholar showed little additional information from reliable sources with the exception of a Maltese lawsuit.

(3) This article is written like an advertisement and has struggled with populating sections with anything but promotional content since 2017. See Mean as custard's 16 and 24 July 2017 edits and Kimsey's 12 April 2019 edit. While WP:NPOV issues shouldn't be enough to warrant deletion, this article has very little room for improvement and has had the same unresolved issues for six years.

(4) The company does not qualify for WP:N because it seems to lack significant sources independent of the subject. This might be a product of this being a Finnish (...or Maltese, depending on the source?) company.

Ethamn (talk) 03:05, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Stubify: It should just clean it up. CastJared (talk) 03:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and add lots of details about allegations of misconduct in Australia and New Zealand. I added some references. Regulators in Australia and New Zealand have accused their local Ferratum companies of various types of misconduct. Perhaps similar misconduct has happened in other countries as well. 04:43, 31 May 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eastmain (talk • contribs)
Good catch Ethamn. I've remove the content copied from the company about page which was the most blatantly promotional part IMO. To be honest I think the NOTPROMO aspect is already enough to blow it up, but I'd agree it's not quite enough for G11, and the rest of the article I can't confirm as infringing so G12 may not be possible either. I'll be reviewing in a bit more detail later today but I'm leaning delete. Alpha3031 (t • c) 05:01, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be writing my full rationale later but I've reviewed the available news coverage and am now fairly solidly supporting delete. The available coverage is routine and not of sufficient depth to establish corporate notability. Ethamn, I've also taken the liberty of unbolding the delete in your response, that's generally considered redundant as you are the person who nominated the article for deletion (that counts as a implicit delete opinion unless stated otherwise) Alpha3031 (t • c) 05:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, it's ILLCON and related, coverage expected for day-to-day operations, etc Alpha3031 (t • c) 12:22, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Elaborating more about routineness. I know a lot of people don't like it being cited, but routineness of the coverage is one of the factors determining whether coverage is significant or not. This applies to all topics, but is also explicitly called out in CORPDEPTH for organisations and companies (partially because of high risk wrt PROMO). Routine coverage is trivial coverage. Significant coverage is about whether we can write an encyclopedic article from the available sources, and we cannot write an encyclopedia article about a subject that merely covers characteristics that it shares with every single other example of the same thing. To determine notability, (and I know people hate this essay even more) we need to determine whether the topic is MILL or SNOWFLAKE. Beyond the illegal conduct (WP:ILLCON) which do not themselves appear to be notable, there is certainly news coverage that can be said to be significant were we measuring things solely on quantity of text. Stuff.co.nz has quite conveniently linked their coverage together in a series, the earliest of which is probably the closest to not being eliminated under ORGDEPTH out of any english language source I've seen. They actually published it three times, slightly rewritten, within about half a week (I'm not really sure what to think of that, but it did give me a slightly disturbing sense of déjà vu before I realised), as Text-a-loan rings alarm bells and defends rates, and "Banks of last resort for needy and naive". What can we take from those articles? They offer (or offered) a loan via text service. That's new. But what else? They charge ridiculously high interest rates? So does every other payday lender. They say they're justified in doing so? So does every other payday lender. Collections? Every other payday lender. This later article does note that they're "one of the more prominent" payday lenders, but what we should say about them it does not. And of course, they do also have two articles about the start and finish of the investigation. I did manage to find another Norwegian source, "Tilbyr lån til 115 prosent rente: – Det er helt hinsides" or "Offering loans at 115 per cent interest: - It is completely beyond the pale" (google translated), but again, the coverage is more appropriate to extract for a general "payday lending" article. It doesn't really offer anything substantive on Ferratum specifically. (Which, to be honest kinda seems like it may apply to our coverage on payday lenders in general. It's... not great, and probably half of them can be deleted) Of course, there's room to disagree about this and while I have more I could probably say I'm not sure I have the time and I've already rambled on for probably too much (don't really have the time to edit this down either, so if anyone wants to hat this with a summary that sets expectations witout being OMGWTFBBQ feel free to do so without asking me). So yeah, basically routine news coverage isn't what we're here to write. Even if it were, the current article text doesn't help us write it. We are, and should be, especially strict re sourcing given the PROMO concerns. And while we could maybe write a "this is a payday lender" with 90% of the article then being "this is what payday lenders do" CORG, the coverage doesn't really seem to support it being about Ferratum specifically. Maybe this can be mentioned on an article on payday lending or history thereof and redirected there, but any specific redirect destination seems speculative at this point, and on the TNT to PRESERVE scale, I'm definitely on the TNT side here. Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:32, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, it's ILLCON and related, coverage expected for day-to-day operations, etc Alpha3031 (t • c) 12:22, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Elaborating more about routineness. I know a lot of people don't like it being cited, but routineness of the coverage is one of the factors determining whether coverage is significant or not. This applies to all topics, but is also explicitly called out in CORPDEPTH for organisations and companies (partially because of high risk wrt PROMO). Routine coverage is trivial coverage. Significant coverage is about whether we can write an encyclopedic article from the available sources, and we cannot write an encyclopedia article about a subject that merely covers characteristics that it shares with every single other example of the same thing. To determine notability, (and I know people hate this essay even more) we need to determine whether the topic is MILL or SNOWFLAKE.

Beyond the illegal conduct (WP:ILLCON) which do not themselves appear to be notable, there is certainly news coverage that can be said to be significant were we measuring things solely on quantity of text. Stuff.co.nz has quite conveniently linked their coverage together in a series, the earliest of which is probably the closest to not being eliminated under ORGDEPTH out of any english language source I've seen. They actually published it three times, slightly rewritten, within about half a week (I'm not really sure what to think of that, but it did give me a slightly disturbing sense of déjà vu before I realised), as Text-a-loan rings alarm bells and defends rates, and "Banks of last resort for needy and naive". What can we take from those articles? They offer (or offered) a loan via text service. That's new. But what else? They charge ridiculously high interest rates? So does every other payday lender. They say they're justified in doing so? So does every other payday lender. Collections? Every other payday lender. This later article does note that they're "one of the more prominent" payday lenders, but what we should say about them it does not. And of course, they do also have two articles about the start and finish of the investigation. I did manage to find another Norwegian source, "Tilbyr lån til 115 prosent rente: – Det er helt hinsides" or "Offering loans at 115 per cent interest: - It is completely beyond the pale" (google translated), but again, the coverage is more appropriate to extract for a general "payday lending" article. It doesn't really offer anything substantive on Ferratum specifically. (Which, to be honest kinda seems like it may apply to our coverage on payday lenders in general. It's... not great, and probably half of them can be deleted)

Of course, there's room to disagree about this and while I have more I could probably say I'm not sure I have the time and I've already rambled on for probably too much (don't really have the time to edit this down either, so if anyone wants to hat this with a summary that sets expectations witout being OMGWTFBBQ feel free to do so without asking me). So yeah, basically routine news coverage isn't what we're here to write. Even if it were, the current article text doesn't help us write it. We are, and should be, especially strict re sourcing given the PROMO concerns. And while we could maybe write a "this is a payday lender" with 90% of the article then being "this is what payday lenders do" CORG, the coverage doesn't really seem to support it being about Ferratum specifically. Maybe this can be mentioned on an article on payday lending or history thereof and redirected there, but any specific redirect destination seems speculative at this point, and on the TNT to PRESERVE scale, I'm definitely on the TNT side here. Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:32, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Finance, Companies, and Finland. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 08:17, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment; I don't see why this is at AfD when the nomination statement itself concedes that stubification is a valid alternative. It's on the cusp of passing GNG for me. Iseult^Δxparlez moi 23:16, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Don't take my word for it I have no idea the policy behind reducing something to a stub. I still support a delete because I feel that the article is hopelessly in violation of NOTPROMO and there is essentially no content available to fix it. This was not notable enough to warrant creation in the first place. Ethamn (talk) 04:04, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There's some Finnish-language coverage in e.g. Helsingin Sanomat, but it all looks like stuff that either falls short of WP:CORPDEPTH or is otherwise non-independent (e.g. news articles based on press releases, interviews of the CEO etc.). I'm not too familiar with how WP:NCORP is usually interpreted, so I'll refrain from officially !voting for now, but if I had to !vote, I think I'd lean a weak delete. -Ljleppan (talk) 07:30, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, generally, we want to exhaust non-deletion options unless the subject of the article just can't pass deletion criteria. Iseult^Δxparlez moi 14:31, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good point, and there are still a couple of foreign language publications that I may need to review. This is one such article I found, though not really the most promising (it also seems to be syndicated but should be mostly independent). Alpha3031 (t • c) 11:37, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:43, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 00:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: No responses after 2 relists.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, 🌶️Jala peño🌶️ Don't click this link! 07:37, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Don't use the deletion process as a cleanup process. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:40, 24 June 2023 (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.