Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Commercial fusion

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was ‎ no consensus without any prejudice against merging or renaming at editorial discretion. During the discussion a series of edits made to the list, sourcing each entry. After that the argument for keeping has become stronger, and the direction of the discussion has shifted. Still, I am calling this a "no consensus" rather than an outright "keep" because there remain concerns made early in the discussion over undue promotion of a technology that has yet to become commercially viable. However, the potentially decisive problem, lack of sources and references, was resolved. The remaining problems have other possible resolutions so deletion is not mandatory. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:00, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Commercial fusion (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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I actually recommend a merge to a relevant section of Fusion power, minus the list of "Commercial Fusion companies" that serves no encyclopedic purpose. Fred Zepelin (talk) 22:20, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 22:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Disagree that a list of companies has no encyclopedic purpose, however this seems like it should be a list page similar to List of private spaceflight companies. There are lots of targets which need to be researched on whether they have reliable sources to support them before a decision should be made on this in my opinion. - Indefensible (talk) 04:16, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is just a list of non-notable scammers created by an WP:SPA. This sort of promotion has no place in Wikipedia. Tercer (talk) 12:24, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I disagree that I fit the description of a WP:SPA - I have an interest in a specific area, and as I am learning about it I am trying to contribute my knowlege to the wider community. I also disagree that this is any way 'promotion' - the article provides an opportunity for the community to give an unbiased and well sourced description of the industry. I have taken the list from an industry source - as far as I know they are not scammers. If they are, and you have something to substantiate that claim, then given that they are recieving so much funding that's probably a really important thing to cite in the article and a further reason not to delete it. Lemondizzle (talk) 03:16, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you have a WP:COI with General Fusion? You need to declare such things. Tercer (talk) 05:56, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete I agree with the nominator that the table of "Commercial fusion companies" serves no encyclopedic purpose; I disagree with the recommendation for merging, because none of the rest of the content is worth it. XOR'easter (talk) 16:06, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm not opposed to a straight delete (I did nominate the article, after all). It's possible that the "First fusion electricity to the grid" section could be a paragraph in the Fusion power article, without that weird section title, though. I'd be okay with a merge or delete, whatever. Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:13, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am fairly new here, so maybe I misunderstand how this works, but is there no opportunity for the article to remain (and be edited, and improved, and refined) for a period of time before people decide whether to delete it or not? There are lots of articles that are stubs and are given opportunity to fulfil potential. While commercial fusion is definitely a sub topic of fusion power, so are many other separate articles. I found the fusion power article to already be very unwieldy - lumping more things in there may not help with that article? Lemondizzle (talk) 03:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You are obviously not a new user, your "first" edits show you had plenty of experience already. Tercer (talk) 06:01, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Tercer here, and I'm about to file a sockpuppet report, but I'll give Lemondizzle a day or so to come clean before I do. The Bapfink vote is highly suspect. Ball's in your court, pal. Fred Zepelin (talk) 20:29, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lemondizzle and Bapfink are probably sockpuppets or meatpuppets and new to Wikipedia. I don't think Lemondizzle's first edits show any more sophistication than my first edits as a registered editor -- after dozens of anonymous IP edits. Stuff like formatting tricks you can get just by looking at the rest of the page. A long-banned editor is more likely to play the drama boards like WP:ANI; new editors start with articles. I doubt they know all our rules yet -- please don't nuke them for now.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 00:48, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree that a list of companies has no encyclopedic purpose - Wikipedia even has lists of lists of companies! See Lists of companies. The list provides a clear view of the approaches being pursued and the favored fuels. However more content would be useful, for instance describing or showing what progress they have made versus the big government funded projects. Bapfink (talk) 17:35, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS: just because we have articles on other companies, some of which are organized into various lists, doesn't mean that this list serves any purpose or has any justification. Why is this a good way to explain the approaches being pursued or the favored fuels? XOR'easter (talk) 18:31, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree, but I did create the article originally so that's not surprising. My rationale was that the term 'commercial fusion' is now widely used, and an objective Wikipedia article would be of value to anyone not familiar with the industry. This is important as a lot of hope is being pinned on these companies, and more importantly taxpayers in many countries (UK, USA, Canada, China...) are part funding them. Moreover, the online coverage is not always objective. Typically I find a wikipedia article useful to give me a balanced view of industries like this, but a simple search for commercial fusion turns up nothing of the sort (e.g., Google search for Commercial Fusion). I'm not particularly wedded to the list of companies which seems to be causing controversy - that list is just taken from the Global Fusion Industry report which I cited on the page. I thought it might serve well to link to all of the articles about the separate companies, and give an overview. I suggest deleting the list if it is deemed unsuitable, but don't delete the whole article. The article clearly needs work and contribution and insight from other users (as do so many other articles), but I thought that was the whole point of Wikipedia - we all contribute and work on an article, rather than have to post the finished article in version 1? Lemondizzle (talk) 02:39, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:56, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, article currently serves little to no purpose overtop of existing fusion articles. Article as a whole is basically just an exemplar of WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Zero prejudice against re-creation when fusion power actually practically exists. IceBergYYC (talk) 16:54, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep There are 2 questions to address.

1. Notability: Commercial fusion is clearly notable. Notability is very well established by multiple reliable sources.^{[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11].}
2. Suitability: If this is a list article, is it suitable for inclusion per our Stand-alone lists guideline.
   • Is this list useful?
     • Yes, if you want to see what's going on with commercial fusion activity.
   • Are the 2 new editors likely linked to Vancouver-based General Fusion?
     • Yes.
   • Is that a conflict of interest?
     • Hmmm -- they've made a big list of …competitors?
       • They've got to be engineers. Marketing would never allow this.
   • Do we have this information anywhere else?
     • No.
   • Will a lot of the companies fail?
     • Yes.
   • Do many of them have serious financial and technical resources committed to them?
     • Definitely. Succeed or fail, collectively these companies are encyclopedic.

Note that our lists guideline requires that every company listed either needs its own article or it needs to be verified with a reliable source as qualifying for the list. So the list entries will need citations (note: cleanup ≠ deletion).

• --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 00:38, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I find it hard to believe that an account with 11 edits (Bapfink) just randomly happened to stumble onto a deletion discussion for a really obscure topic and voted the same way as the article creator, 9 hours apart, when the article creator also has just 32 edits. That's a hell of a coincidence. Fred Zepelin (talk) 20:27, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just added links to five Wall Street Journal commercial fusion articles to Talk:Commercial fusion.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 04:42, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have begun adding refs to list entries for companies that don't already have a Wikipedia article (i.e., blue link).

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 05:44, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete As this smells like a WP:SPA to me, and potentially a COI. As for Lemondizzle and Bapfink, J'Accuse! --TheInsatiableOne (talk) 11:00, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @TheInsatiableOne, I'm not a WP:SPA. I'm just trying to improve an article.

  --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 11:13, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, otherwise merge per nom. I'm not seeing any policy-based rationale for deletion here, notwithstanding all the unedifying personal attacks on the article creator. Even the list appears to meet the nonexclusive criterion of WP:NLIST of having been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, see e.g. [12], [13], [14]. Even if they are all scammers, a list of scammers seems like a helpful and encyclopedic thing for Wikipedia to provide. -- Visviva (talk) 03:29, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to fusion power and remove companies in the list not supported by reliable sources. Two policy-based reasons: First, Wikipedia is not about what companies will accomplish in the WP:FUTURE, and commercial fusion remains a future technology. Secondly, the focus only on privately run companies in the title of the article. Does it count as "commercial fusion" if the first nuclear fusion power generator design is worked out in a government-run lab and first offered by a public utility? Unclear. I don't think there is a blatant attempt to self-promote, but I think the discussion above shows there are some (possibly unrealized) implicit assumptions here that violate WP:POVTITLE at least. A neutral, encyclopedic framing of the topic would be something like Fusion research organizations. 〈 Forbes₇₂ | Talk 〉 22:39, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Forbes72, to your concerns:

  • Reliable sourcing:
    • Since finding this AfD, I have been researching the companies on the list and adding references per our guideline. I've verified and cited 20 companies so far. Another 7 already have Wikipedia articles. I expect they'll all be done in the next several days.
  • WP:FUTURE:
    • This is a list of companies that have funding and have ongoing development activity. Wikipedia has articles on all sorts of science and commercial projects underway and not yet brought to fruition: super-tall buildings, lunar missions, stealth fighters, etc.
  • Public vs private activities
    • We already have an extensive list of mostly government and academic fusion experiments at List of fusion experiments. That article is already very long at 91kB; it's just short of our WP:TOOBIG limit of 100kB.
  • Self-promotion / POV
    • I don't have any sort of COI. These companies would never hire me.

  --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:36, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding WP:FUTURE, Individual scheduled or expected future events should be included only if the event is notable and almost certain to take place. New buildings/lunar missions/fighter jets are reasonably routine to produce, while commercial fusion is an endpoint that may not happen for *any* of the companies mentioned in the article. If the list of fusion experiments is missing commercial efforts backed up by reliable sources, feel free to add them - it's easy to WP:SPLIT if the list gets too long. On the other hand, starting a separate article that ignores the rest of the field of research is precisely the kind of WP:UNDUE problem I am trying to point out. Finally, I am not accusing anyone of COI; I am saying that calling what these companies are working on "commercial fusion" belies some rather debatable assumptions that might actually be false. 〈 Forbes₇₂ | Talk 〉

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Business, Companies, Engineering, and Technology. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:50, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Notification left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Energy. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:52, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete commercial fusion does not yet exist. There are some non-notable companies and articles discussing investment. I think that a list of companies proposing commercial fusion would suffer from a lack of notability. --Bejnar (talk) 17:24, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Bejnar - take a look at the article as it is now, not several days ago:

  1. I left 11 refs above to establish notability of the topic; some of the sources: The New York Times, WBUR, New Scientist, and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.^(diff)
  2. I left 5 refs from The Wall Street Journal at Talk:Commercial fusion.
  3. I've added 20+ refs to Commercial fusion
  4. 6 of the companies at Commercial fusion#Commercial Fusion companies already have Wikipedia articles, all of them well-referenced, all of them notable on a standalone basis.
     • Commonwealth Fusion Systems, General Fusion, Helion Energy, TAE Technologies, Tokamak Energy, Zap Energy
  5. Our WP:NLIST guideline does not require each entry be notable, just that they be verified as qualified for listing.
  6. Here is the list of government sponsored activities:
     • List of fusion experiments.

     Many are listed as "operational" but just one is a successful reactor.

     • The National Ignition Facility announced a breakeven shot 9 months ago.
     • Just like the commercial efforts, few will eventually reach breakeven

  WP:NOTE and WP:LIST should apply here.

  --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 18:37, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Update I have spent a number of hours on this article. The are now 48 citations to reliable sources

All but 4 of the 53 companies have one or more reliable citations noting they are actively engaged in fusion work; there are 3 obscure companies I have left tagged as "[citation needed]" for now and another one I've tagged as "[better source needed]".

Some companies do not have plans to build working fusion reactors. They're either working on commercializing some necessary component or they are performing research under contract to someone else (most often the U.S. Department of Energy).

67% of the content in bytes and 87% of total edits now come from non-COI editors.^[15]

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:21, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: this is a concept, not a fact. I agree with most of the !Deletes, but Bejnar is most convincing. JFHJr (㊟) 04:38, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep for a few reasons.
  1. Meets WP:NLIST based on sources in article including [16][17][18]
     • Note also that the subject overall meets WP:GNG per sources in the article.
  2. There is no worry about WP:FUTURE/CRYSTAL, this is about entities that are documented as "working on commercial fusion" in some capacity now. Whether they ever achieve it does not affect present day notability.
  3. The context, the sources, and NLIST (from above) keep this firmly out of the realm of WP:NOTDIRECTORY.
     • The context includes notes about failure to deliver on stated timelines, suggesting that this is not inherently a promotional list. More context can be added if needed, but the demonstration of context as improving the article is already present.
  4. Saving perhaps the most important for last, and demonstrating the importance of pillars 3 and 4 -- A. B. seems to have performed a WP:HEY on the article itself, changing it from a mostly unreferenced list to an almost completely referenced one.

—siroχo 04:45, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The existence of this group of companies is at least as encyclopedic as as Barbenheimer, Vue International, or Alberta Investment Management Corporation, and arguably more so. The list is prima-facia evidence of breadth of the field and alternative ways of demonstrating breadth are difficult to reliably source (eg "15 companies include ZYX and Acme,..."). Whether ultimately successful or not, the quest for commercial fusion is notable. The problems of the article -- no context for the words in the boxes, a pointless chart for marketing guesses, lack of references pointing no commercial success, for examples -- are all things that could be repaired.
• Rename to List of fusion companies because that's what this is (if kept). Reywas92^Talk 01:10, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to List of fusion companies. The guidelines for Lists are a lot more relaxed that for other topic areas and in the past, it is usually left to the subject-matter experts to determine the criteria for inclusion. In addition and in my opinion, the current title is promotional and spammy. HighKing⁺⁺ 14:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]