User talk:RonaldMcWendys/Captûre Wines

COI disclosure

If anyone finds relevant means for expansion within the article, please feel welcome to do so. I will do my best to keep up to date and follow this subject. Additionally, I welcome anyone with the user ability to upload a relevant photo for the info box.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 18:17, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Disclosure of my connection with the article's subject: I work for Captûre Wines. I have made a visible effort to write with only neutral tone and use sources deemed relevant by Wikipedia for all article contents. As I have already mentioned in a previous post, I welcome all members of the community to contribute to the article both in ways of current improvement and future expansion as more information arises.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 03:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

(Moved from User talk:Amatulic for continuation here)

Hi Amatulic, thanks for bringing attention to the article I have been authoring. I noticed the key issues mentioned within your concern were notability and COI.

Regarding Wikipedia Guidelines for notability, 4 of the 6 sources used in the article are published third party sources, of which include Wines and Vines.com, San Francisco Business Times, WineCountry.com, and Appellation America.com. Wikipedia does not state a certain amount necessary, though I thought I had collected enough relevant sources to warrant article construction. I understand from WP:BFAQ#WHY that to be notable, "the basic requirement is that multiple independent sources must have written non-trivial amounts of information about a company before a Wikipedia article on that company is appropriate." Perhaps your issue is not that these sources aren't third-party, but in some way including only trivial information? As time progresses, I, too, would like to see the winery's future production of wines, evolution of the team, and reviews/press included for expansion when relevant--For now, I would appreciate your help in explaining how these current sources are not sufficient in the creation of this article, which falls under valid description of existing categories for WikiWine Project, Sonoma Wineries, History of Sonoma County, CA, and Companies based in Sonoma County, CA.

Regarding COI, I have no intention of hiding my connection to this article's winery. I do work for them and I thought I had already marked this fact on the discussion page of the article. It's now obvious in looking at the discussion page that I forgot. This was my mistake and I have already remedied said issue within the article's talk page. This fact aside, one can read the Captûre Wines article and see I have made a concerted effort towards creating it with a neutral tone and citing all information with what is considered from guideline description, Wikipedia-deemed notable sources (notwithstanding the content regarding Vineyard Block names and plantings, which was sourced from Tin Cross Vineyards' site.)

I noticed from your user page that you have much experience in editing articles on Wikipedia. If you still believe the article is worthy of deletion after having read to this point, I ask, if you would, for your advice and insights on why as well as how to improve this article. One thing I never forgot to include on the talk page was a welcomed invitation to article improvement and expansion by the community, and this invitation extends to you as well. I hope that in your experience you will find the same merit I see in this article's contribution to the WikiWine Project and its appropriate categories on Wikipedia.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 03:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. I congratulate you on your efforts to write a neutral article in spite of your stated conflict of interest. You have done an excellent job complying with policies for reliability, verifiability, neutrality, no original research, etc.

A criterion for article inclusion is the notability of the subject. While this article describes the winery quite well, it fails to assert anything notable about it. It isn't enough that the winery is mentioned or profiled in reliable 3rd party sources. Those sources need to explain what's notable about the winery, and as far as I can tell, they don't. Where have the wines been reviewed?

I like to use my family's winery as a standard of comparison in cases like this. My own family's winery has received 3rd-party coverage similar to Captûre's, it produces about double the capacity of Captûre's, it produces "luxury" wines that sell for over $100/bottle when a restaurant discovers the winery and buys a few cases, and the wines are so popular that they sell out their stock entirely from the tasting room each year without needing to advertise or rely on alternative distribution channels. And yet, I won't ever write an article about it on Wikipedia. Why? Well, according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines, the winery hasn't had truly notable coverage about its wines. Being in a notable region doesn't automatically confer notability on the individual wineries in that region.

Let's look at the sources so far:

• Wines and Vines chooses wineries to profile in every issue. I don't know what criteria they use other than whether the story will be interesting to readers. While the article tells an interesting story about the winery, I don't see anything in it that confers notability. Being the first in the region may do the trick but that's a stretch. In any case, the author of the article seems to have gained the story from the winery itself, so it's not much better than a press release from the winery.
• I have no idea why Appelation America is even being used as a source. That source is essentially content-free, containing only the name and address of the winery. No notability established here.
• San Francisco Business Times might contain a mild assertion of notability because it mentions a connection between the CEO and Kendall Jackson, which is notable enough to have an article on Wikipeda. Still, it doesn't really say anything notable about Captûre Wines itself, only about what's intended. I don't see notability established here either.
• Blocks contains no information about Captûre Wines, and nothing notable about the plot of land it describes. This is unnecessary to cite as a source unless the article really needs it.
• The WineCountry article is similar to the one in Wines and Vines. Nice story, describing a winery full of potential, but nothing to indicate that this potential has been achieved. Being potentially notable isn't sufficient for inclusion in Wikipedia.
• "Our wines" is self-published material. Nothing wrong with that, but self-published material doesn't confer notability.

In my view, this winery is far too new to have an article here. Articles for other newborn wineries have been deleted for similar reasons. In a couple years, when it's better established and has had some reviews from influential wine critics, then an article might be warranted.

This article generated some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine#Another Case of Self-promotion?. More arguments for deleting this article appear there. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:38, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Amatulic. I have weighed in at the discussion over on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine#Another Case of Self-promotion?.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 22:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)