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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. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:49, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adora Cheung

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Adora Cheung (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Many references, but all of them are essentially press releases or local stories for non notable founder of a failed company. DGG ( talk ) 16:12, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. North America1000 05:43, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. North America1000 05:43, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Also the Washington Post. I've added references to the article, too. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:01, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 00:41, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
not coerced, persuaded. DGG ( talk ) 01:25, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – Assertions of "PR" should be backed up with objective evidence for such claims, rather than proof by assertion alone. The articles provided above are bylined news articles written by staff writers that have been published in independent, reliable sources. These are not press releases, as evidenced in part by utilizing Google searches using the titles of these article, in which links are only present for these articles themselves, as opposed to press releases, which typically have the same article hosted on many various websites. North America1000 03:01, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- TOOSOON. The coverage is all PR like or tangential, with trivial mentions. For example:
  • Forbes -- an article about a new venture of the brother of the subject, who is only mentioned in passing
  • Vanity Fair article -- retelling of a blog post by the subject, not a suitable source for a bio article
  • Tech Crunch -- interview with the subject about the company
  • San Jose News -- interview with the subject about the company (i.e. adds to company notability, not the subject's)
  • Washington post -- article about the company, with the subject mentioned in passing.
  • Etc.
The company may be notable, but its former CEO does not appear to be independently notable. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:54, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, the individual has adequate indicia of notability, the coverage by major news outlets clearly meets GNG. If anything, the company could be merged into this biography, frankly. Montanabw(talk) 22:49, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to Homejoy Excellent analysis by K.e.coffman. This is a BIO1E. The coverage of the individual is solely in the context of the company and notability cannot be inherited from the company itself. (Also note that she was the co-founder along with her brother - should we also have an article for her brother as well then?) The company is no doubt notable, but that doesn't make the founders automatically notable. Till, that time the information about the founder needs to be covered in the article about the company. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 02:31, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Editors also need to understand that GNG is not an automatic free pass to an article. GNG is subject to WP:NOT (which is a policy) as well as other guidelines like the single event guidelines. We tend to cover founders of notable companies in the company article unless it can be demonstrated that the individual is notable independent of the company. (As a sidenote, many of the sources are interviews which are primary sources not useful for notability.) --Lemongirl942 (talk) 02:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:N is also a policy. In this case, to say that the company is more notable than its founder or a CEO is circular reasoning; I see no "policy" that says that a company's founder is only notable in the context of their company ... if anything, it should be the other way around! Montanabw(talk) 23:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:N is a guideline. WP:NOT is a policy. The fact whether a company is notable or the founder is notable can be seen from the nature of the sources. Over here, the sources talk mostly about the company with a small mention about the founders. Sometimes, the founders are quoted in the articles. This happens all the time with founders of every small company. If we start keeping articles on this basis, we will become a directory of business-people (which goes against WP:NOTDIR). Which is why we have WP:BIO1E and WP:PAGEDECIDE as well WP:NOTINHERITED to apply along with GNG. The sources show that the company is notable, not the founder. This has been applied across multiple articles on multiple business-people. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 01:11, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't BIO1E... there's coverage for her after HomeJoy. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 21:49, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Could you show me some of the significant coverage apart from Homejoy? I don't see any. Simply being quoted is not significant coverage. Reliable secondary sources are needed. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 15:01, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Aggregate of the sources seems to pass GNG to me. In terms of what's already been discussed: the TechCrunch and Vanity Fair pieces are entirely devoted to her work, I see no reason why they wouldn't be relevant to a biography; the WaPo piece has several paragraphs on her work so it counts for something; the preface to the Mercury News interview is secondary source material and thus goes toward to notability. Then for some more sources: here is a Business Insider piece in which she's featured, a Recode piece, Forbes write-up and further commentary on the Recode piece, etc. Article's shortcomings seem editorial to me, rather than shortcomings in available sourcing or that any exclusion criteria apply. Innisfree987 (talk) 00:22, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • GNG is not the only reason. We also look at WP:BIO1E and WP:PAGEDECIDE. The nature of the references show whether we should have a page. I'm also unable to understand your sources
  1. Business Insider piece Trivial mention. The only mention of Cheung is a single line caption below a photo. There is literally no mention in the article. (I also don't understand why do you say she is "featured").
  2. Recode piece, Forbes piece Literally deal with how the company failed. It has a few quotes by Cheung but nothing else.
Notability also cannot be inherited from a company. Over here it is clear that the company is the focus of the article. And the subject at best deserves a section on that article, but definitely not a standalone article. You can also see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes#Business_people_and_executives. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 00:56, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Still more sources, on her more recent enterprises:
She has substantial coverage in multiple reliable sources for multiple endeavors. Innisfree987 (talk) 01:50, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For completeness ( potential additions to the article) here's what else I've found so far that hasn't been mentioned at AfD yet.
Innisfree987 (talk) 02:09, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment about sources Unfortunately, this is a still a WP:BIO1E.

Fortune,Gizmodo, Wired, FastCo, A different TechCrunch piece - Every single one of these sources simply mention Cheung in the context that she announced stuff. Note that none of these sources are significant coverage. The other sources you pasted after that are all about Homejoy again, making it a BIO1E. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 15:00, 12 September 2016 (UTC) Another important thing to keep in mind is that startups are usually in news and getting an article "up" on Techcrunch/Gizmodo/Wired/Forbes is not a big deal. What needs to be seen is the subject is independently notable - that is someone has decided to cover the subject without focusing on the company. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 15:09, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re:"What needs to be seen is...someone has decided to cover the subject without focusing on the company." 1, We do have commentary on endeavors beyond the company (unlike for the Payal Kadakia example below, where it was all about ClassPass, here we have additional sources on Cheung being on the board at Y Combinator and the cities project) so I don't agree with the 1E reading, and 2, if I understand correctly that the suggestion is we require coverage of a person that doesn't dwell on their work, I disagree. We would never say coverage of an author wouldn't count unless it wasn't in reference to the books they wrote; if anything a source that set aside their work and purely discussed their personal life might well be considered too tabloid-y to count toward notability. I'm going to be plain, I'm troubled by the suggestion work a woman did is somehow not relevant to her notability--and not because I think it's Wikipedia's job to make women look good, in fact I think including this coverage will not necessarily be flattering, as a good chunk of it holds up her work as an example of a controversial deregulatory trend in U.S. political economy.
What Wikipedia does have to do is apply its own rules evenly. In terms of how such cases are commonly handled, you might be interested in how the Julio Cabral-Corrada AfD went this week--another young person in the U.S. related to business and political questions, but that entry had much less sourcing than this one does, and closed as no consensus. I don't believe it's accurate to say cases like this are "usually deleted". Innisfree987 (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- RoySmith (talk) 12:58, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • AfD is supposed to be for discussion so I don't understand your refusal to discuss. Neither do I understand what you mean by "various AFD's about women subjects"; I vote on multiple AfDs about different topics and I apply the same standards everywhere. That actually helps to understand notability better. I see that you have been exclusively voting on AfDs about women, may I invite you to try voting on other AfDs as well? --Lemongirl942 (talk) 03:11, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is appropriate to have a very brief merge and redirect as suggested, but not an independent article. The sort of duplicate coverage shown here is purely promotional and does not justify a separate article. Expecting individual coverage in cases likethis amounts to changing wikipedia from an encyclopedia into not just a who's who, but Who's Who among Young People. It's a violation not primarily of BLP1E, but of the fundamental policies in WP:NOT. Hmlarson, I can't act as I normally would as an admin because I am involved in the discussion, but your comments to Lemongirl are violation of our equally fundamental policy, l No Personal Attacks. . DGG ( talk ) 04:52, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.
    1. Alsever, Jennifer (November 2014). "How to Run a Successful Sibling Startup". Inc. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-09-19.

      The article notes:

      Adora Cheung had tried starting companies with co-founders before. But it wasn't until 2012, while working on her laptop in her brother's filthy apartment, that Cheung both hit on a great startup idea--Homejoy, an online service that helps users locate a housecleaner--and found her ideal partner, her brother Aaron. Today, the pair jointly run Homejoy, which operates in over 30 markets and has more than 200 employees and $40 million in funding.

      ...

      Why have the Cheungs succeeded when so many sibling co-founders fail?

      Adora says it's because they are both introverts who grew up in a goal-oriented, studious family. They rarely get frazzled under stress, and each can be blunt without the other's taking offense. "You inherently trust your sibling more than anyone else in the world," Adora says. "You know you have each other's back."

    2. Arbel, Tali (2014-01-08). "How to get ahead in business with a short resume". The Business Journal. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-09-19.

      The article notes:

      Homejoy

      FOUNDERS: Adora Cheung, 30, and her brother Aaron Cheung, 25

      STARTED IN: Mountain View, Calif., July 2012

      THE BUSINESS: Now based in San Francisco, Homejoy's website connects more than 100,000 house cleaners with customers in about 30 cities in the U.S. and Canada

      MONEY RAISED: $40 million

      BIG BACKER: Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal

      Coming out of the University of Rochester, which had no entrepreneurial community that she was aware of, Adora Cheung wanted to learn how startups work. She joined a Bay Area company, Slide, which was started by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.

      ...

      — FOLLOWING FRIENDS: After Cheung left Slide, she and her brother spent three-and-a-half years trying to come up with a business. They participated in the Y Combinator accelerator program, which helps startups launch. Friends who had been through the program recommended it.

    3. Hull, Dana (2013-12-04). "Housecleaning startup Homejoy raises $38 million". San Jose Mercury News. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-09-19.

      The article notes:

      Homejoy, a housecleaning startup launched last year in San Francisco, is set to announce Thursday it has raised $38 million in venture funding from Google (GOOG) Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and angel investor Max Levchin.

      The company was founded by Adora and Aaron Cheung, siblings who created an online platform that connects house cleaners who need steady work to clients eager for an easy way to get their houses and apartments cleaned.

      ...

      Cheung, 30, became a housecleaner for a month to learn about the industry. She said that several investors in Silicon Valley have used Homejoy and began to approach the company about raising capital.

    4. Walker, Alissa (2016-06-27). "Now Y Combinator Wants to Build a City Because Every Other Tech Company Is Doing It". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-09-19.

      The article notes:

      In an announcement today, Y Combinator partner Adora Cheung (who joined the famous seed-funder four weeks ago) writes that our present cities “don’t provide the opportunities and living conditions necessary for success.” Cheung goes on to highlight specific failures the project hopes to address in the areas of affordable housing and transportation.

    5. Rhodes, Margaret (2016-07-08). "Y Combinator's Plan to Build a New City? Not Actually Crazy". Wired. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-09-19.

      The article notes:

      Last week, Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator that helped launch companies like Dropbox and Airbnb, announced it was launching an ambitious project of its own. The “New Cities” initiative will study freshly minted cities, and how to plan, design, and build them from scratch.

      To many, the announcement registered as audacious, even for Silicon Valley. The language surrounding the announcement sounds like it’s lifted from a half-baked VC pitch deck (“You can fix existing cities, which a lot of people are doing, or you can reimagine them from a blank state,” says Adora Cheung, who will head up the project with Y Combinator president Sam Altman) and details about the project’s curriculum are scant (Cheung says “it’s all TBD”).

    6. Bonanos, Paul (2014-05-23). "Homejoy: Cleaning up the mobile competition". San Francisco Business Journal. Retrieved 2016-09-19.

      The article notes:

      When Homejoy co-founder and CEO Adora Cheung began exploring new ways technology could improve on traditional house-cleaning services, she took matters into her own hands, literally: She joined one of them and started scrubbing.

      “I worked at a service for a little bit to pick up some skills and learn how old-school companies work,” Cheung said. “It took them hours to juggle a schedule,” she explained. “I thought, ‘I could make this happen in less than one second, with code.’”

    There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Adora Cheung to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

    Cunard (talk) 00:28, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment and analysis - Every single source listed there is essentially either a business profile or a press release-laced "news"; there has been considerable consensus that the Business Journals, such as the last one listed here, can not be used at all for notability, let alone actually NPOV non-PR uses, because they are essentially always simply interviews, puffery about the person and their companies. Owning and operating one's own company is not by itself a suggestion of actual independent notability at all, as we would need said non-PR coverage of course. The sources above even include unacceptable things, take the first paragraph of the Business Journals for example,

    When Homejoy co-founder and CEO Adora Cheung began exploring new ways technology could improve on traditional house-cleaning services, she took matters into her own hands, literally: She joined one of them and started scrubbing.

    “I worked at a service for a little bit to pick up some skills and learn how old-school companies work,” Cheung said. “It took them hours to juggle a schedule,” she explained. “I thought, ‘I could make this happen in less than one second, with code.’”

    No actual working-jourbalist should mention this, and of course they would not, because a Business Journal "employee" is simply involving themselves with PR and fluffing their interview. It even goes to talk about how she operates her company, as if this was a job listing-like interview, which essentially there also been consensus that the Business Journals is used for funding and financing seeking opportunities. One of the articles even states the company is "ambitious", this basically translates as not being notable if they still need to motivate "ambitions". The article even goes to state how she "was working with housecleaning for a month", none of that would be meaningful for a genuine news article, and it obviously is supported and supplied by Adora Cheung herself; it states by itself that anything about this would not be acceptable, the fact it's listed as it is shows there must have essentially been nothing else meaningful for the "news". There are claims from the Keep votes that GNG is somehow met yet they are not actually supplying their analysis or otherwise comments about this, and they have not met anywhere to somehow acknowledge the said PR concerns; therefore there's nothing to suggest these Keep votes can be taken thoroughly or seriously. If that's honestly the best coverage that can be listed, that's explaining enough. Even my comment earlier stated this clearly and exactly. SwisterTwister talk 01:06, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Per Cunard. I don't find the arguments for WP:BLP1E compelling. Coverage about Cheung typically relates to her company, but that's not coverage for one event, but for a career and a business. Safehaven86 (talk) 00:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This comment is rather thin considering users have stated exactly the concerns here, yet the comment sinply states "per other user, [for career and a business].". SwisterTwister talk 01:10, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I was simply saying that Cunard did a very thorough analysis here, and I agree with that user. I can say that without echoing all of that user's comments. Writing "per X user" is a frequent practice at AFD and elsewhere on Wikipedia. It's a way of signaling agreement with another user's comments without having to restate them all Ad infinitum. Safehaven86 (talk) 01:16, 20 September 2016 (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.
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