Hi,
Someone added a link to Current Motor Company on the Vectrix wikipedia entry (he'd read about us on annarbor.com). I then went in and added a Current Motor Company page using the Vectrix page as a template. You can see the page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Motor_Company
Now, it immediately got flagged for "speedy deletion" because the person who tagged it considered that it has no context. I believe it has as much context and justification of a wikipedia entry as the Vectrix and Zero-X entries. If you feel that way too then please consider going to wikipedia and placing your comments on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Current_Motor_Company page. That way the moderators/admins will hopefully not delete the page.
If you don't feel the page I created belongs on wikipedia feel free to write that too - however, could you also post here, or PM me, and explain why (so that I can try and create a page of value).
Thanks!
Some thoughts:
Be careful about the Conflict of Interest rule on Wikipedia, you should probably leave edits to the CuMoCo page to people outside the company. That said, the article itself does appear to follow the 'neutral point of view' policy, since it's a simple factual description of the company and the product.
I think the company is relevant for the reasons already listed on the discussion page, but the lack of external news media discussion hurts the argument. I think it's time to start the self-promotion gig, and talk to various environmental/technology type blogs, AutoBlogGreen would be my suggested starting point. It's not unlikely that the article will be deleted now, but restored in a month or two.
We should probably put in an entry for the C130 bike (if that is the final name) into the list of samples on the Electric Motorcycles and Scooters page.
My electric vehicle: CuMoCo C130 scooter.
MikeB -
re: conflict of interest: I tried to keep it neutral and not a sales pitch. Hopefully others, such as yourself, will take over the care and feeding of the page. Unfortunately even though wikipedia doesn't want to be a form of advertising for products it is important that we have our product listed - especially when the competitions products are listed.
re: name: Yes, C130 can be considered final. Even if we add a word-based name later we'll still likely use the C130 name as well. If you would consider adding into the list of samples that would be great (or, do you think it's OK for me to add?)
re: coverage: I contacted AutoBlogGreen a while back and they ignored me. It might be better coming from someone else. Would you be prepared to ping them for me? Same with the EVCast guys. Apparently nodbody likes me! I do have a couple of other media coverage items but I don't know if they'd be accepted:
1) youtube video that discusses the engineering cooperative where we work and features us.
2) podcast on David Harrington's "Just Gotta Scoot" website
3) an MP3 of an interview I did on a local radio station
4) an article in another (smaller) local news website
What do you think? Should I add those in to the wikipedia page?
Or should I just "chill" and accept if they delete it that it can be reinstated when CuMoCo becomes a household name?
p.s. before anyone chimes in with "you should advertise more" - I KNOW! Sorry for the all caps shouting but lots of people tell me this - and I know it's true. However, we're a product focused company and we're fully focused on the product right now. The PR, marketing and sales efforts will start in earnest "real soon now"
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
I've added the C130 and C124 to the Electric Scooters page, and noticed that the 'flagged for deletion' has been removed from the CuMoCo page.
John, you need to update your website, especially the table of stats for the various bike models. The names need adjusting, top speed on the C130 still reads 60mph, and the peak power outputs in hp are probably still preliminary. I listed the peak power in kW for the C130 an C124, which I think it a good number for comparison to other bikes, but we need an authoritative number. People will start to question the accuracy of the number if there are different values in different locations.
My electric vehicle: CuMoCo C130 scooter.
One of the Wikipedia rules that irritates me the most is the "mainstream source" requirement for validity of citations or the notability of a thing or event. This is, of course fine for scientific or academic topics, but for current event topics, it can get problematic. The mainstream media - especially the US-English media, tends to ignore or memory-hole a lot of important topics.
MikeB - someone named "Dbartland" already removed your entries stating it was spam. Sigh. It's not so much being removed that sucks it's the complete dual standards. He's also removed all content from the Current Motor Company page. I'm not going to reply to him now. I need to count to ten (or ten thousand) before I do that.
Sigh.
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
Grr, dbartland apparently doesn't know what he's doing. I also fixed the entry for the 'VentureOne' EV, since Venture Vehicles has halted development of their electric-only model and renamed the product (and company) to Persu Hybrid/Persu Mobility. By undoing my change, he's now replaced more accurate information with less accurate information.
My electric vehicle: CuMoCo C130 scooter.