Comment Re:As a long-time contributor (Score 1) 632
....But that doesn't mean the pages shouldn't exist.
A friend of mine is a biker (pedal variety), and he was reading up on different makes, models, etc, on Wikipedia. He found a mess. Lots of companies, major companies (in their niches) were missing, and any attempt to create a page resulted in instant deletion. He chose one particular company, and, with another editor, defended it tooth and nail for a few weeks.
I'm not sure if it's still there or not.
He's not the CEO of this company, he's not a stakeholder...he doesn't even own one of their bikes. But that information should be in Wikipedia, whether or not it drives business for the company. People who visited company pages from Wikipedia stay longer? That's probably because they want to end up where they are.
That's not to say that conflict of interest isn't a problem; but the problem (IMHO) isn't simple inclusion. Any company with a reasonable number of employees and customers deserves at least a mention. In the case of bicycles, some of the pages that weren't permitted to exist were (to some subculture or style) vitally important; maybe, say, one of the only downhill bike manufacturers. The problem is when the pages are one-sided, or when people start tinkering with rankings or redirection.
Anyway, just my two cents. I've more often been frustrated by the lack of existence of a page for some random company, than by...well, the existence of a page, no matter how biased (I can always tone down the bias myself, after all).