St. Vincent de Paul thrift stores

[tylerfilla]

St. Vincent de Paul thrift stores are operated by independent nonprofits kind of like Goodwill shops. There's an international organization, national units (e.g. SSVP/SVdP USA), and a bunch of local chapters (e.g. SVdP St. Louis and SVdP Santa Clara County). A chapter can operate a network of thrift stores (though not all do) and customize its branding quite a bit, so there isn't really a homogenous brand like what's currently modeled in NSI or even on Wikidata. There already are Wikidata items for many of these local chapters (councils). I was getting ready to split the Wikidata item, as it conflates SVdP USA with this abstract retail chain identity, but I wanted to talk about it here first because it was created for NSI. I understand this goes beyond NSI and touches on tagging practice, but since NSI has an entry for it I wanted to create an issue on this repo. Thanks!

[1ec5]

As you suspected, when I created this item, I had in mind the “chain” (more like a concept) more than the USA council per se. Another precedent would be AAA, which isn’t uniform across its many chapters. Feel free to split up the item more precisely, though it’ll probably be less disruptive if the current one remains focused on the chain.

Do you think we should introduce a bunch of operator entries to NSI, as we did with Goodwill? My rationale then was that Goodwill affiliates often put their name on the main sign or otherwise brand their region’s stores uniquely. I don’t know if that’s the case with SVdP, as I’m only familiar with one chapter’s thrift stores.

[tylerfilla]

I should clarify a bit. I think it's a good idea to tag the stores with their respective councils/operators, but I don't know if NSI needs or wants to be aware of all of them. Would each council/operator have to be judged on its own re: notability, or does belonging to a larger confederation imply it?

Some stores are, indeed, operated by SVdP USA; they call these "national stores". It seems the remaining stores within the U.S. are operated by local affiliated nonprofits. The Cincinnati affiliate actually has a custom logo, oddly enough.

I'll create a talk topic on the Wikidata item since that's largely off-topic. I appreciate your concern about the possible disruption; that's why I wanted to discuss :)