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Comment by ph0rque | Hacker News Reader

why are there only 16 yc companies listed?

For a while Wikipedia had such a complete list that we ourselves used to refer to it. Then some wikipedian decided to "improve" the list by deleting most of them. Since then it has always been a more or less random subset of YC funded cos.

I guess there should be a separate page listing all YC funded companies (if you can have pages listing all characters in tv series, why not companies funded by YC?).

why not companies funded by YC?

Because the standard of 'notability' is bogus when applied to something of the supposed scope of wikipedia. It's impossible to apply it with any reasonable consistency, and it always boils down to a few biased opinions, which is why the topic of notability deletions is so sensitive.

Yeah I don't know - they removed RescueTime and some others. It seems pretty incomplete to have some but not others. I don't know what criteria they're using to decide which should be listed.

Well, they should be using the criteria set out in WP:COMPANY -- I don't think they're quite there yet. Some notable companies are unlisted, and some not-yet-notable companies are.

Not every company is notable, and certainly not companies at the two-guys-and-no-revenue stage (compare to your local dry cleaner, who is probably actually profitable).

The article is about YCombinator, so I'd expect to find all of their known investments listed, 'notable' or otherwise.

I can understand not wanting to have an ARTICLE on each YC companies... But it seems that any page that is primarily about a VC firm would benefit from an up to date listing of investments (and status of those companies).

This list would provide a better understanding of YC. Given that there is no SEO juice with links from Wikipedia and given that being on the list resulted in 2-10 vists per day for RescueTime (when we were on it), I see lots of benefit (in term of being accurate/complete), no harm, and no real significant benefit to the companies lists.

The articles for prominent VC firms don't have a complete list of their investments. There's 20-something listed for Kleiner Perkins, 30-something for Sequoia, and only 3 for DFJ.

Why not include a complete list though, so long as it can be maintained?

If the information is public I don't see any good reason why it must be a subset.

I think that is what the VC company's site could be used for.

By that logic, ANY entities site could be used for ANY information on Wikipedia. The point is that it's valuable and useful information that isn't readily available (most VCs keep incomplete lists, probably to marginalize the failures). The lists would enhance the knowledge of the reader, which SHOULD be the goal of Wikipedia.

I don't. Lists are easily maintained on a wiki with a large number of users, which you wouldn't get with a VC company site. Given that the wikipedia article is about a notable company, and the list of funded companies is one of the most important facts about that notable company, it should be included in its entirety. There is almost nothing to be gained by having a partial list.

I would think that either you'd include a list that is as complete as possible, or not include it at all. Doing a partial list because you don't WANT it complete is just warped.

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