Wikipedia:On_Wikipedia,_solutions_are_mixtures_and_nothing_else
Wikipedia:On Wikipedia, solutions are mixtures and nothing else
On new page patrol and articles for creation, one often comes across pages about companies that provide something called solutions. It might be something like: "For high volume reusers that currently rely on the Wikimedia Dumps to access our information, we have created a solution to ingest Wikimedia content in near real time without excessive API calls (Structured Content API) or maintaining hooks into our infrastructure (Firehose)." — Wikimedia Enterprise on Meta-Wiki.
This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This page in a nutshell: Public relations slang, like "we offer solutions", is a good indication that an article is promotional and may not be notable. |
Now the Wikipedia article on Solution (chemistry) states, in the first paragraph, that a solution "is a special type of homogeneous mixture composed of two or more substances. In such a mixture, a solute is a substance dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent." One may also find solutions as the goal of equation solving.
So if one writes an article about a company that provides solutions, the very least the reader expects to know is what solvent is used and what solute gets dissolved in it; or else what kind of equation solving they offer. On newly introduced pages, one usually finds that vital information to be lacking, leading new page patrollers to believe that the page's creator had another definition of "solution" in mind, one that warrants considering the entire article promotional and, in the more extreme cases, tagging it for speedy deletion. This latter definition of "solution" is public relations slang that should be avoided in Wikipedia articles.