Wiki143:Featured list candidates/List of acquisitions by Hewlett-Packard/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by User:Matthewedwards 15:52, 25 October 2008 [1].

List of acquisitions by Hewlett-Packard

This list is part of the FLC Contest. I think it fulfills the featured list criteria.—Chris! ct 20:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

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Resolved concerns from SRX
Oppose
  • This is a list of acquisitions by Hewlett-Packard (HP), an information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California. - Featured lists are discouraged to begin with This is a list of _____. Also, per WP:MOSBOLD, there should be no links in bold. Would read better as Hewlett Packard (HP) is an information technology corporation headquartered in Pal Alto, California.
  • Each acquisition is for the respective company in its entirety, unless otherwise specified. - is -->has (past tense)
  • The acquisition date listed is the date of the agreement between HP and the subject of the acquisition. The value of each acquisition is listed in US dollars because HP is headquartered in the United States. If the value of an acquisition is not listed, then it is undisclosed. - should be in a key or in a prose above the table but within the table's section.
  • However, HP acquired its first company, the F.L. Moseley Company, in 1958. - sentences shouldn't begin with however it's not grammatically correct. How about HP, however, acquired ...etc.
  • The company's largest acquisition as of October 2008 is its merger with Compaq, a personal computer manufacturer for US$25 billion, in 2001. - so Compaq was worth 25b? If so, the sentence doesn't read as so, needs rewording.
  • Several acquired firms are also related information technology consulting. - a word is missing..to.
  • I also feel the lead should be expanded and say more about the acquisition, more than just the first and more recent ones.

--SRX 20:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I base everything on List of acquisitions by Google. I guess it isn't up to standard anymore.—Chris! ct 21:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Done —Chris! ct 22:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Further Comments
  • In the ref column, those that don't have a ref and have a dash, what is verifying the acquisition?
The general refs are.—Chris! ct 01:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Would benefit changing the Number column to #.
Done—Chris! ct 01:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
--SRX 00:24, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - concerns have been addressed to meet WP:WIAFL.--SRX 01:11, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Fixed —Chris! ct 22:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Otherwise sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

  • Acquisition is linked on its second use, not first. Fixed
  • Not sure of the "HP specializes in building a wide variety of technology-related products "... reads like an advert. Removed
  • Overlinked US$ in the lead (three times?) Fixed
  • And printer. Removed
  • Why right align the value when you don't use zeros? No point in trying to numerically align them when you use billion and million etc. Fixed
  • Is it US$ or USD? Fixed
  • merger links to the same aritcle as acquisition. Removed
  • The 'hash' col doesn't need to be there does it? Date order fulfills identical functionality.
The column shows how many acquisitions.
Removed
  • Why two rows unreferenced? Fixed

The Rambling Man (talk) 17:43, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Comments by SatyrTN
  • The lede is a bit long and, agreeing with The Rambling Man, that "HP specializes..." sentence reads like an advert. I would take that sentence out, and the last sentence of the lede, which smacks of WP:SYNTH (though may be perfectly sourceable). Removed
  • The sentence SRX changed above would make sense if it read "Each acquisition was for the respective company in its entirety..." Removed
  • MOS:FLAG would seem to indicate that the country names are sufficient for this table and the full flag is not needed. Removed
  • As per above, the "#" column is redundant to the Date column.
The column shows how many acquisitions.
Actually, the column shows the order of acquisitions, not the number. In a sortable table, that information is duplicated in the very next column, the date. So it's redundant.
Removed
  • As mentioned above, I'm a tad worried at the lack of reference for two entries. Fixed
  • Conditional Oppose, but will revisit. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 19:32, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support: I'd still like it better if that first column were removed. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 16:56, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Quite a number of problems.

  • The NYSE code is not relevant. Removed
  • "headquartered" is a horrible word.
Any suggestion
  • "Today, HP has become". See WP:DATED. Try "As of 2008, HP is". Fixed
  • "serving more than one billion customers in 170 countries on six continents" is pure marketing bullshit. Removed
  • Arguably "HP specializes" and "a wide variety of" contradict each other. HP is not a specialist manufacturer. Removed
  • Some repetition in the list of products. Blades are servers are computers, as are PDAs. A switch is a networking product. "Storage" goes to a dab link, and is too general a term. Removed
  • "Since its founding in 1939" repeats. Removed
  • "Hewlett-Packard has made a total of 69 acquisitions" is completely OR and wrong. According to official site it has made 38 major acquisitions/mergers since 2000 (this list has 50 since 2000) and the unofficial alumni site lists over 150 in total.
Yes, it is wrong but not really OR. I will add a note about this
  • "In its first 19 years of existence, HP did not acquired a company" is redundant, given the next sentence. Removed
  • "During the 1980s and early 1990s, HP began" You can't "begin" to do something over a two decade period. It started acquiring computer companies in 1989, beginning with Apollo Computer. The value of the deal isn't particularly important, and is repeated in the table.
  • It isn't clear why Convex Computer is mentioned in the lead.
It is a large computer firm HP acquired
  • In the Compaq deal, comma before "when". Fixed
  • "From 2005 to 2008, HP purchased 14 software companies, the largest of which was" appears to be OR, as is the final paragraph.
I disagree. This is based on the table. Final sentence partially removed
  • "The acquisition doubled the size of HP’s software business." Need to state "size" is in annual revenue (not e.g., sales units or profit). Added
  • "The acquisition date listed is the date of the agreement between HP and the subject of the acquisition" this is a get-out IMO and not always correct. The first four have sources that list the actual acquisition date. You don't know when the announcement was. Avantek's source talks about a "recent purchase". Colorado Memory Systems's source is for the date of the actual acquisition. Metrix Network Systems's source only mentions a "tentative agreement". The Comdisco announcement was July 16 but it cleared a review in August 6, which is the date in the list. VoodoPC was announced on Sep 28 but completed on Oct 31, which is the date in the list. There's probably more but I only looked at a sample. Dealt with
  • The Value is usually the value at the time of the announcement, and this should be noted. The value when the actual acquisition took place may be different and depend on the share prices. I don't think you need explain why the value is in US dollars. Fixed
  • "If the value of an acquisition is not listed, then it is undisclosed." Comments on a similar list indicate that if the company has shareholders, the value will be disclosed. For example, [2] gives a little detail on the Tower pricing, but you can't work out the total value. It is disclosed, but you'll have to work harder to find out the actual amount. Dealt with
  • Two of the list elements are unsourced. Fixed
  • The dates are inconsistently formatted. Log out to see a mix of US dates and ISO format. This affects both publication date and access date columns. You should be able to use the new parameters to the cite templates to make it consistently US format, and there is no longer any requirement to autoformat or wikilink dates. I will remove them, just need some more time.—Chris! ct 06:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
  • "Each acquisition has for the respective company in its entirety, unless otherwise specified. " Should that be "is for". Where has it been "otherwise specified"? Fixed

Colin°Talk 20:29, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest "headquartered" be replaced by "based", or "with headquarters". Wrt both OR issues, if you've counted the table rows (or subsets of the table rows), and the table is collated from multiple sources, then you fail WP:SYNTH. If there was a single authoritative source for all HP acquisitions, then counting the rows would be reasonable summary information, and if the one source categorised the acquisitions (like this does) then you could use those categories to say e.g., it had made X software acquisitions since YYYY. But doing this from your own collated data or your own categorisations is OR and it appears the numbers are also wrong. The statement "and shifted its attention toward computer manufacturing" appears to be your (or someone's, not the sources) own interpretation of the primary data. This isn't allowed -- you need to find e.g., a business magazine that highlighted 1989 as the point when HP shifted its attention towards computer manufacturing.
I see you've appended "unless the exact acquisition date is known" to the acquisition date explanation. Well there are several dates that are present in the sources, not just two: the date of the announcement, the date it clears some regulatory review, the date of the acquisition and the date of the newspaper article. You can't say "is known" because the reader will think "is known at all", not "is known by Chris". The actual date of the acquisition can probably be found in a more specialist computer business journal, or in some public record that a good library might be able to help you with, and will certainly be mentioned in HPs annual report for that year. If this is too hard to achieve, then you could consider having separate announcement and acquisition date columns, and fill in what you can. Then we need to decide if that is comprehensive enough for an FA. The bigger problem at the moment is the concern that the list is only half as long as it should be. Colin°Talk 13:09, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I can count the numbers of acquisition from here, but this source inflates the total acquisitions by including firms that are acquired by companies eventually acquired by HP. Since I am not an expert on this, I have to ask. Do I have to include those companies as well? As for the date issue, I will sort it out in two different date columns.—Chris! ct 19:40, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I didn't spot that subtlety in the hpalumni page. I agree that indirect acquisitions don't count, but that's just my opinion. Looking closer, there's other problems with that source. It mentions when the percentage-stake has changed but I'm not sure what counts as an an acquisition in that regard. Do you have to buy the whole thing? It also mentions buying such things as the "Sara Lee Europe IT Department" which sounds more like Sara Lee outsourced their IT to HP. And "Data Systems (from Union Carbide)" sounds like they bought a division. Is that an acquisition? Ultimately, it is just a volunteer-produced list so not the most reliable of sources. Hmm. Colin°Talk 19:59, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, this is not the best but it is the best one out there that listed all acquisitions. As for the dates, I've fixed them, so please take a look. BTW, (answering one of your concerns above) I don't think the statement "if the company has shareholders, the value will be disclosed" is true at all. Take Tower Software for example, this source explicitly says "HP didn't say how much the acquisition worth" even though Tower has shareholders.—Chris! ct 21:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm guessing the shares were privately traded (with Tower owning most of Tower Software and being a privately held business) so no stock exchange was involved. There are sources saying the Tower deal was for an "undisclosed" amount. It is tricky to prove a negative if you just can't find the information. Colin°Talk 21:50, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
If that is the case, then should I keep the following sentence "If the value of an acquisition is not listed, then it is undisclosed" or rewrite it so that it reflects what's going on?—Chris! ct 22:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

(outdent). The new source (alacrastore) currently lists 116 acquisitions since 1986, not its founding as stated in the article. In addition, I don't see anything in that source to indicate these are indirect acquisitions as stated in the article. The brief summary of each news item in the alacrastore source indicates whether the acquisition was for an undisclosed amount or for a value -- but you have to pay to see what the value was. So, for example, Tower's amount was disclosed. The lead remains almost completely original research and even if the 116 figure was accurate, it would need an "As of XXX" prefix as it is likely to become inaccurate in a few weeks. Aside from whether the table has all the entries, the value and date columns aren't comprehensive, though probably could become so if an editor had access to a paid financial service. I suspect that providing a comprehensive and detailed list of acquisitions for a company like HP is beyond the means of amateur WP editors. Colin°Talk 21:27, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

The brief summary on each acquisition do provide enough information without having to pay subscription. For example, on this Tower acquisition page, the abstract shows us the values. And also the alacrastore provides a timeline about hp acquisitions free. (you have to look at each acquisition page in order to see whether they are indirect acquisitions) So there should be enough info to make a list. As for the lead, I am still working on it.—Chris! ct 23:27, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Oppose Comments from Script error: No such module "user".
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Resolved comments from Gary King (talk) 20:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry but, to add on to what is mentioned above, the list is also missing several acquisitions, only from within the past ten years no less. Considering the company has been around for over fifty years, there might be more out there. Some missing acquisitions include:

I have this already
Added
[3] says this is merged into a company called Silverwire, which is included in the list already —Chris! ct 19:33, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Added
Added

Gary King (talk) 03:46, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

There are still more missing. Hewlett-Packard is a particularly tough company to create a comprehensive list of acquisitions for because of its longevity.


There must be more that I missed. Gary King (talk) 02:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me. This makes me wonder: how do you know all these companies? Do you go to a specific website or something?—Chris! ct 04:11, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
You've added a lot more now. It looks much better. Gary King (talk) 20:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

To reviewers: I have addressed most of them. I will addressed the rest of them tomorrow. Thanks—Chris! ct 04:42, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

To reviewers: I have addressed most if not every concerns. The date issue is dealt with. As for the acquisitions, I have a new source that has a timeline about HP acquisitions and make sure that this time I did not miss any of them.—Chris! ct 06:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I've perfected the list and I believe it now fulfills the FL criteria. Thanks—Chris! ct 01:40, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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