Monday, December 18, 2017

Wikipedia Does Not Do a Good Job Covering Corporate History

I like to use Wikipedia to learn about the things I come across in life. For example, there are strip malls that have the title "Furniture Row" in many towns. These malls include a eclectic selection of "furniture stores." On seeing these stores, I've wonder is: "'Furniture Row' a collection of independent stores, or is it one huge store that presents itself as a multiple businesses?'

There was a page on Wikipedia that answered this question, but one of the editors at Wikipedia decided that the chain was too insignificant to deserve a Wikipedia Page and the editor deleted the page.

The Furniture Row corporation is quite large. Their web site lists 115 locations. These locations have about 300 pseudo stores. (BTW, the answer to my question is that Furniture Row is a single company with multiple pseudo stores to make Furniture Row appear like a row of different stores.)

It is possible that Wikipedia dislikes this marketing scheme. Making the departments of a store look like different businesses is a bit deceptive. Wikipedia encourages its authors to point out deceptive and controversial thing about firms.

Many of the Furniture Row locations are built on the outskirts of town. I dislike this type of construction as it encourages suburban sprawl. This is something that can be addressed in articles.

The press page of Furniture Row talks about how they give money to The Salvation Army and the Tim Tebow Foundation. It is possible that the Wikipedia editors dislike the politics or religious affiliations of the company.

To be honest. I have no problems with capricious decisions. Problems arise when one entity, like Wikipedia, dominates the information society. In such a world, capricious decisions have effects.

I believe that the information society is better served by having a large number of independent researchers on independent platforms researching things like corporate histories than it is to have one huge platform pretending to be the authoritative voice simply because is run with a group-think process.

In my case, I am researching the world from the community up. I live in the Mountain West. Furniture Row has a bunch of shops in the Mountain West. It fits in the category of things I am researching so I put up an article Furniture Row.

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