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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 merge‎ to Incel.

The discussion has completely run out of steam and left everyone exhausted, with a number of personal attacks being thrown around. I see a mixture of those wanting to keep, merge or delete the article - however, many of the rationales were refuted. This suggests a "no consensus" close, but I am reluctant to read that as a the consensus as it retains the full article, and there are a significant proportion of editors that explicitly didn't want that.

Therefore, I have to conclude that the appropriate compromise would be to merge, and I hope that's something that everyone, on all sides of the debate, can accept. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 08:35, 10 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Incels.is


Incels.is (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)
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I don't think there's sufficient notability for a standalone article about this site, which I think should probably be redirected to the primary topic at Incel. Most of the references mention the site (under one of its various TLDs — .is, .me, or .co), but are primarily focused on describing the incel subculture rather than specifics about this one website. Furthermore, most of the content here is already included at Incel. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:22, 18 May 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Delete or merge: superficially, there's significant news coverage of this site, but since it's essentially the same community and phenomenon as in the deleted subreddit, this coverage is better contextualised at incel, which it already is, according to nom. small jars t c 17:37, 19 May 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Merge with incel. I would hate to see all the effort that has been put into this article go to waste, so I encourage anyone involved in this topic area to salvage its content elsewhere—both at the main incel article, and anywhere else where it may prove valuable. Kurtis (talk) 20:16, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Those sources are all in-depth and independent. Therefore, they are sufficient to prove the article does not violate WP:GNG. It is also to note that the creator of this AfD states that they are the creator of the incel article. I believe that this should be a factor in discussing this nomination. Finally, I am disclosing that I am the creator of this article, under a different dynamic IP. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 20:53, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Though these are about "incels.is", but all but one of them turn out to be about the "incel" online community in general, which just happens to be centred on that site at present. Our incel article is already explicitly about the online community, so the independent notability of the site runs shallow. However, your third source is interesting: it provides a mathematical analysis of "incels.co" (the same site) as a website in its own right, in terms of the dynamics of content moderation and how the incel community’s expungement from reddit may have modified their views and behaviour on the new forum. If we had a couple more sources on this level, I would vote keep, but for now this source is better used within incel. small jars t c 21:44, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
In the first source, the abstract states This paper presents a study of the (now suspended) online discussion forum Incels.me and its users, involuntary celibates or incels, a virtual community of isolated men without a sexual life, who see women as the cause of their problems and often use the forum for misogynistic hate speech and other forms of incitement.
I think this invalidates you saying all but one of the sources talk about the website and not the community.
Finally, for the second source, if you have access to the paper through your institution, the website is central to the study and its characteristics are described therein. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:49, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
ad hominem on nom
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Comment. I learned that the nominator is a site admin. I find it quite immature and petty for a site admin to nominate an article in which she has an editorial interest (in her page she says she created the incel article), all while completely bulldozing through the AfD etiquette and not citing a single example of policy (edit: *policy violation. Also, I forgot to mention more importantly that she did not declare her editorial COI, as creator and major contributor of the incel article, while making this nomination). 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:19, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I'll add a note to my nomination about creating the page, since you seem concerned that it might influence this discussion, but it's not clear to me what exactly would be improper about this in your eyes, or "immature" or "petty". If anything I would think my editorial interest in the topic would make me more keen to see additional articles about related subjects, not less. The idea of an "editorial COI" is bizarre, though — people routinely contribute to editing and discussing pages on the same topic area.
Regarding citing some "policy violation", the page doesn't meet the notability guideline — which I think I've made quite clear in my nomination statement. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 21:33, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I have shown above it meets WP:GNG. Furthermore, it does not fall into any category of WP:NOT. Hence, according to the notability guideline you gave, this gives the subject presumed notability. It is your burden of proof to show it does not have notability in spite of the significant, in-depth coverage.
The reason you have given "Most of the references mention the site (under one of its various TLDs — .is, .me, or .co), but are primarily focused on describing the incel subculture rather than specifics about this one website" goes against the examples of in-depth coverage of the website I have provided and which can be verified by other people in this discussion. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:41, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
This is not a courtroom, and there is not a "burden of proof" or some rule that articles that don't fall into any of the very specific examples at WP:NOT are somehow inherently notable.
I've stated that I don't believe the sources used at incels.is — a superset of the four you've listed here — establish sufficient notability for a standalone article. It's clear that you disagree. The purpose of this discussion is to gain input from others, who will also evaluate the sourcing in the article, on whether or not those sources are sufficient to warrant a standalone article. Once consensus is established, the article will be kept or merged/redirected/deleted according to that consensus.
( edit conflict) Regarding your suggestion that the sources establish in-depth coverage, I disagree. The sources here often describe incels.is because it is a useful corpus to study when trying to study the incel phenomenon. But most of the sources here are describing the incel subculture and its members, rather than the website itself. Furthermore, while the first three sources are interesting, they are primary research papers and not as useful for establishing notability compared to secondary sources. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 21:47, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
You are not contributing to the discussion. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:51, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
If you wish to completely discount those sources (unlike the policy suggests), there leaves multiple (at least two) other sources to appreciate, the third one I provided earlier and https://mashable.com/article/incels-me-domain-suspended-by-registry. So I believe WP:GNG is satisfied by a long shot. Also, it is disingenuous to edit your comment after my reply without marking it, which is why I restored the order of the messages. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:02, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Please do not edit my messages. We had an edit conflict as you left a comment at the same time I was expanding on mine, as I noted in my edit summary ("ec"). I have stated my position on the article and its sources, and given that you now seem to be resorting to bludgeoning and attacking me personally I am going to end this conversation, as it's stopped being productive and threatens to drown out outside opinions on the article's suitability for inclusion as a standalone page. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 22:05, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
The volume of replies alone does not constitute the concept described in WP:BLUDGEONING, so I consider this a false accusation. You were the one stonewalling the conversation right until your second-to-last reply. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Think of it this way: you've lumped several domain names into one topic, as they have all served the purpose of hosting the incel community. If we extend this to lump in one more place that has historically served this purpose, r/incels, we have the exact topic of a much better article that already exists. small jars t c 22:09, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
By WP:COMBINE, the transitive property of the domain names is a routine calculation. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:14, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
The difference between the subreddit and the site is also transitive, according to the majority of reliable sources. small jars t c 22:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
One can verify that there are no sources saying the creators of the site were admins of the subreddit. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:32, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
The point is that they are treated as the same effective community by the majority of sources, not that those sources explicitly verify that there is continuity, i.e., the difference is not notable, whether or not the sameness is verified. small jars t c 22:39, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
That is not reflected in the sources (see my earlier source analysis, which you can yourself verify). 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:40, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Hi IP, saying disparaging things about probably one the most respected editors here is not helpful. See also WP:No personal attacks. She did cite stand-alone notability as the concern which is what AfD is meant to determine. You have stated your argument from a notability perspective so leave it others to consider. (Note I am the AfC reviewer who accepted the draft). S0091 ( talk) 21:37, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I will consider a more neutral tone, however, I did wanted to state her failure to follow WP:AFDFORMAT by not stating her publicly-verifiable COI, as well as her making blanket statements about sourcing all while not mentioning any example. Both are disingenuous acts meanwhile the person herself most definitely makes valuable contributions to Wikipedia which I already appreciated looking at her user page and contributions earlier. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:45, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
You may wish to familiarize yourself with WP:COI. I assume you are not actually intending to allege that I have some kind of personal or financial connection to incels.is, or (somehow) to the subculture as a whole. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 22:00, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I argue that you have a COI as at least one website refers your main Wikipedia contribution as incels (source to this BLP statement: https://www.yahoo.com/now/molly-white-crypto-skeptics-122044537.html) and you are most known as a Wikipedia contributor and writer. Given that, I believe it is hard to make edits and requests around this topic anymore while not being mindful of your PR. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:10, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
That is frankly absurd, but WP:COIN is thataway if you want to actually pursue that argument. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 22:13, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
You obviously don't get into a COI over a topic area just by writing an article in that topic area. That would make every editor a COI editor. small jars t c 22:03, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I argued that it is a form of COI in my response above, but I think you can also appreciate this kind of nomination with the lay term pettiness. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:13, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
IP, it's not that you should consider a neutral tone towards another editor, you must do that. And no offense, there is no way in hell you are going to be able to prove GW has a COI with this topic because it does not exist. More importantly, following that line of thought will just distract from the goal of determining notability so just drop it. Let your !vote with sources stand on its on own. S0091 ( talk) 22:14, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Weak keep it's a bit hard finding sources for this since lots of news articles avoid naming the forum (understandably), but there are at least two studies ( the one above and this report I found, which doesn't mention the site by name but which is clearly alluding to it), plus at least one substantive new article ( 1). Combined with other, briefer mentions in news, I think thati it passes GNG. AryKun ( talk) 06:55, 21 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    • Changing to a merge on further thought, since arguments further down about how this could be contextualized in a forums section in the main intel argument have convinced me. AryKun ( talk) 13:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Ping @ GorillaWarfare, @ Kurtis, @ SmallJarsWithGreenLabels, and @ TheInsatiableOne, incase any of you missed this. AryKun ( talk) 12:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    My 2c: I'm not terribly convinced by the introduction of a report that "clearly alludes to" the site, which seems iffy from a WP:OR perspective. This is another source that is describing incels and their online activity by looking at one of their largest forums, but is primarily focused on the subculture and individuals rather than the specific site — something that is made particularly clear by this source's decision not to even name the forum. As for the Mashable article, that is already used in this article. It is at least a source that is more about the website than about the incel phenomenon, but I don't think it's enough to confer notability without some other sources (preferably from more reliable sources, see WP:RSP#Mashable) like it. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:24, 22 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    If the site is not explicitly named in the source then the source is not usable. I removed at least a couple sources along with the related content when reviewing the draft because the site was not named, therefore failed WP:V (much less notability). S0091 ( talk) 18:58, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Weak keepIncel is a pretty long article, I don't see the harm in this being repurposed to a {{ main}} for the subtopic of incel online communities more generally, including the subreddit it spawned from, but I don't feel strongly about whether the website itself (on its various domain names) is itself notable and have no real desire to read the handful of academic papers mentioned above in order to form a stronger opinion either way. —  OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk; please {{ ping}} me in replies) 17:44, 25 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: For further input... since it's unclear if the article should be kept or merged.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, CycloneYoris talk! 01:39, 26 May 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Keep per WP:RELART which tells us to keep a related article if it is itself notable, and per WP:GNG of the sources about the website. Also, WP:NOMERGE. The main article is very large and has a scope problem. If anything, minding WP:OR, the sources in common should be used to talk about this website, but not the whole terrorist movement. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 22:34, 26 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Welcome to Wikipedia and congratulations on your first edit. How did you find this discussion? GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    The main article is very large...
    Incel is medium length and incels.is is a stub.
    ...and has a scope problem.
    If it was about the term itself, incels.is would be out of scope, but the topic is the online subculture and its effects as described in the lede, and this is stuck to throughout the article. small jars t c 12:27, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    • This page is start class (more than 150 words of prose; not a stub). The main article is 8500 words readable prose, which according to WP:SIZERULE can justify splitting based on size alone. Hencewhy I am suggesting following WP:NOTMERGE. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
      I admit I misjudged the length of incel (thought the reference section made up more of the text than it does), but incels.is is clearly a stub, and merging will increase the length of incel even less since about 60% of the content on incels.is is just contextualising information that's already included in the main article. So, if you're referring to the first <li> of NOTMERGE, it will not apply. small jars t c 16:07, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
      • This page is not a stub per WP:SIZERULE. The second reason behind WP:NOMERGE is content related. The sources are about the website and pass WP:WEBCRIT. Systematically generalizing this website to the whole notion of incel, as the main article does, is WP:SYNTH. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 16:32, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
        I can't get the prosesize extension to work, but the point remains that forum-specific content is skeletal. I'm not sure what you mean by Systematically generalizing this website to the whole notion of incel, but 1. the main article is not about the "notion of incel," but again, about a mainly online phenomenon, and 2. most sources covering incels.is are primarily about that phenomenon, so there is no OR involved in discussing incels.is in that context. Per all the sources on the article, you can't even begin to discuss incels.is without describing incels. This is about as obviously non-SYNTH as it gets. small jars t c 17:23, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
        • The sourced content about this website meets WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV. Per what is already sourced in the article, it supports the website's content, rules, history, demographics and relevance. Per WP:RELART, both articles can exist concurrently. There is definitely WP:OR generalization in the main article since per nomination it uses sources from here, yet I do not see the website mentioned anywhere except the Incel#See also section. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:08, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
          • It's mentioned repeatedly in the incel article, just not named explicitly (per the approach taken by multiple sources that mention the site, such as the CCDH study). GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:19, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            @ GorillaWarfare (or anyone) if the result is merge, then I am assuming the site would be named in the incel article. Is that correct? S0091 ( talk) 18:24, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            That's probably a separate discussion (which I imagine could be hashed out on the article talk page rather than AfD). GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:28, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            This would certainly lead to weasel words and even more WP:OR generalization in the main article. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            Comment: I have just verified that all the sources about the website currently on this article mention the website by name. This seems to only pertain to the CCDH study mentioned above. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:48, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            Hi IP, can you point to three that are about the site rather than it being used as an example to extrapolate information about the overall incel community? Mind you, I am the reviewer who accepted the draft and struggled with the crossover with main article. At the end of the day decided it was borderline and the community should decide so here we are. S0091 ( talk) 19:44, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
( edit conflict) To clarify, when I said above "per the approach taken by multiple sources that mention the site, such as the CCDH study" I was referring to sources used in Incel, not in Incels.is. Taking a quick look through the sources in the .is article right now, your claim is mostly accurate, with the exception of citation #8 (Scroll.in) and #17 (Salon), which are more auxiliary sources used for claims made about incels more broadly.
I'm not sure what you mean about weasel words and "OR generalization", though. Generalization is not OR, it's a part of writing encyclopedic content from a multitude of sources. WP:SYNTH would of course be inappropriate, but I don't see why that would be a certain outcome of not mentioning the site's URL. But again, this is probably something that should be sussed out after the decision is made on whether to keep this article or not, in order to avoid wasting time debating something that may become a moot point, and to avoid making this already long discussion even longer. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 19:52, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply


Media coverage:
  • [ref 1] The site is the largest incel forum, examples of posts, characteristics of site content. Talks about its administration.
  • [ref 23] Talks about the conflict between Jack Richard Peterson and the site. Talks about the nature of site content.
  • [ref 12] Article dedicated to the website. Site suspension as a result of content violations. Describes site content as "pedophilic, pro-rape" and as a successor to r/incels.
  • [ref 9] Article dedicated to a former member of the site. Characterizes the mixed forum response to that ex member leaving.
Scholarly coverage:
  • [ref 3] (Proceedings of the ACM on HCI) Explains the factors behind this site's moderation.
  • [ref 5] (Gender and Society) Overview of the website. Change in domain names. Website demographic stats. Site rules.
Note that I did not do an exhaustive source analysis but that is more than enough to justify the website's presumed notability. More sources (in this article and elsewhere like at Jack Richard Peterson or Incel) exist. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:17, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
IP, when someone asks specifically for three, only given them three and make them the best three. I am not going through all of those so out of the ones you provided, which three are the best. You can just give the footnote numbers. S0091 ( talk) 20:36, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Please keep in mind that to avoid a formal fallacy while disproving non-notability, a full source analysis is needed. But I am pretty confident of the sources I provided, you can check the first three for instance. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
1 & 5 put things in the context of the longer-term history of incels online. 23 & 9 are primarily about individual self-identified incels. As I've already said, 3 is the sort of thing the article needs, but it's not enough on its own. Refer to GW's reply to AK above for 12. Given the overlap in coverage and the need for context, I imagine the best possible article on incels.is would be almost identical to our already existing article on incel culture in general, with the addition of explicit reference to the current name of the site. By keeping we are just directing readers away from a more informative resource. small jars t c 23:58, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Policy relevant to your concern can be read at WP:RELART and WP:NOMERGE. If WP:GNG is satisfied, we can keep overlapping articles. I have provided evidence of 3+ WP:RS talking about the website in depth (regardless if they also talk about incel or not). Fundamentally, those guidelines are there so that you have enough material to write an article with. In the sources I have given, there is more usable information pertaining to the site demographics, site history and style of content posted on there. Even then, this article is currently larger than stub level and stays on topic. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 00:19, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
"I imagine the best possible article on incels.is would be almost identical to our already existing article on incel culture in general". Once again, the sources do talk about the website in depth, since "no WP:OR was needed to extract their content" for the incels.is article. This is the definition at WP:WHATSIGCOV. This is why I was raising the concern of WP:OR at the original article. I would suggest to WP:GAR the incel article to solve this issue. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 00:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Would you mind raising your OR concerns about Incel at the talk page of that article? I'm interested in learning more about what your concerns are, but don't want to derail this conversation with a tangential one. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Note: In addition to WP:NOTMERGE, WP:SIZESPLIT and WP:CONTENTSPLIT, I would suggest reading the essay at WP:OTHERCONTENT, in particular The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on whether or not the same or similar content exists or is formatted similarly in some other page; this is because there is nothing stopping anyone from editing or creating any article. All in all, the argument given to merge seems to contradict policy and precedent, especially since there is stand-alone WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV for the website. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:49, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Quick q: Are you the same editor as the IP above (130.156.160.91)? GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:10, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom and small jars. After reviewing (re-reviewing in some cases) many of the sources cited here along with the coverage in main article, Incels, I find there is only scant information covered in Incels.is that is not already comprehensively covered in the main article. Although I am not opposed to merging (or redirecting) there is not much to merge really other the than the name of the site. I also find IP 2001:48F8's arguments unconvincing and comes across as throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Ultimately, the only source that is explicitly about the site rather than the subculture or forums is Mashable which is not enough to meet GNG thus does not warrant a stand-alone article, at least at this time. S0091 ( talk) 18:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Notability is based on the existence of sourced material not on the current state of the article. Ultimately, the only source that is explicitly about the site rather than the subculture or forums is Mashable which is not enough to meet GNG thus does not warrant a stand-alone article, at least at this time. That is a falsehood for the purpose of WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV, which the reviewer can verify in my or someone other's subsequent source analysis. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Again, see WP:OTHERCONTENT.
    You cannot expect me to dig you up three sources, all to proceed with a WP:ICANTHEARYOU-type argument. In fact, I am not throwing things at you, I am referring to policy, which is what is expected in an AFD.
    In the course of this relist I have yet to see an example of policy that is violated. Meanwhile, I and others have stated reasons to keep this article from both notability/SIGCOV and size perspectives. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:51, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    The purpose of AfD is to determine if a stand-alone article is warranted which does often take digging up sources so the community can make an informed decision and I did ask for the three sources. You provided six or seven of which I considered in addition to other editor's comments about them. I happen to disagree with small jar about #3 as I think it is mostly about Reddit/online communities using a couple forums as examples and most of the relevant content is covered at Incels but they disagree about Mashable which I think is a source supporting notability, even if weak but either way the article does meet GNG.
    The only policy I think you have cited is WP:OR which you used incorrectly as GW and small jars pointed out. Most of the others are essays or information pages with some having less weight with the community than others and for some you are interpreting incorrectly. For example WP:OTHERCONTENT is an essay and one not cited often at least in AfDs because it has nothing to do with whether a stand-alone article should exist. WP:GNG, a guideline, states: This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article. This is even if an article meets GNG.
    I also want to clarify I never said you were throwing things at me, which would be at least uncivil if not a personal attack. You have committed neither but you are skewing into WP:BLUDGEONING territory so I will not comment further as it invites often unhelpful responses. The closer will assess the strength of the arguments so leaving it in their capable hands. S0091 ( talk) 20:38, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    See WP:ONLYESSAY. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 21:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    To add on, essays reflect past consensus (or else they are edited away) and are particularly useful here to avoid this discussion from becoming WP:POINTY and WP:IDONTLIKEIT about the topic at hand. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 21:06, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Also, as before, see WP:NOMERGE. Quoting directly, this article is a discrete subject and the incel article is too long, and both are notable. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 21:03, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Perhaps don't make three additional replies after a second editor raises WP:BLUDGEON concerns. Just my 2¢. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Keep: As per above reasons to have the article kept. SapphireWilliams ( talk pagecontributions) 10:08, 1 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. Sufficient sourcing demonstrated by the IP contributor. The first source they give, https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jlac.00026.jak is specifically titled "Online hatred of women in the Incels.me forum", so it's not about Incels in general, it is specifically about this forum. It is not a "primary research paper" in sense of WP:SCHOLARSHIP, that's about a paper introducing a scientific concept; this paper is very much a secondary source, as it didn't make up the Incels.me forum. With the other sources listed, these suffice for individual notability. With due credit to the nominator, who is deservedly respected as mentioned above, the Incel article is quite large (and well written!), and can stand to have a few independent related articles like this one that have standalone notability. -- GRuban ( talk) 15:27, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    If you can access more than the title, the abstract of that source states that The aim of this study is to shed light on the group dynamics of the incel community, by applying mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyse how the users of the forum create in-group identity and how they construct major out-groups, particularly women, which makes it clear that they are studying the online community in general and that the forum is just their point of access for data. small jars t c 17:51, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    That is cherrypicking. The previous paragraph (which you conveniently cut off), as well as the whole article both mention the site in detail. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 19:23, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    "Mentions the site in detail" is an oxymoron. The point that the coverage is ultimately about the online community instead of the particular forums used at the time particular sources were written seems to stand for this source. To argue for keeping, either the relevance of this point to deletion must be contested, or sufficient sources to which it does not apply must be found. I think the former argument would be more productive. Personally, it doesn’t seem useful to distinguish between the phenomenon and the place it happens in, when the notability of the place entirely derives from the phenomenon, but that intuition may well not be backed by policy. small jars t c 19:55, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    That is the core point here - there is just no real RS on "Incel.is" as a standalone topic (WP:BASIC will show that). Much of the above is trying to "bend" other RS into being about the site, when it is really about topics related to Incels, and Incels online, but not "Incel.is". Wikipedia is not the place for promotion of a site, it must be in itself notable. Aszx5000 ( talk) 20:00, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Yeah, but the number of sources like this that do include incels.is right in the title makes this a weird case. I think it's obvious that separating this site from the context that makes it matter is unhelpful, but I can't find any specific policy to affirm that. We need something like WP:1E for non-BLP topics like this. small jars t c 20:05, 2 June 2023 (UTC) thanks to the comments of some more experienced editors below, I now know where to find the thing I was looking for small jars t c 06:15, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Sources have been brought up which discuss:
    • the website's history
    • the website's content characteristics
    • the website's rules
    • the website's moderation style
    • the website's admins
    • interactions between the website and some of its prominent users (a spokesman and an ex moderator)
    • the website's popularity (it is the largest incel forum, among others like 4chan /r9k/, r/ForeverAlone, etc)
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:07, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    The first sentence of the abstract (which you left out) reads: This paper presents a study of the (now suspended) online discussion forum incels.me and its users, involuntary celibates or incels, [...] 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:03, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Where does it say "Incels.is". Aszx5000 ( talk) 20:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Relaying what another user mentioned before I found this discussion, this is covered by the essay WP:COMBINE. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:08, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    .me and .is are two successive domains used by the same community with (apparently) the same operators. To be fair, the first part of that statement is true of r/incels and the things from before that as well. small jars t c 21:56, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Comment. Can't really find any material standalone notability for this site (and not SIGCOV profile to give standalone notability); like the r\incel, should be merged into the main article (or a list of other incel sites). Aszx5000 ( talk) 19:09, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Note that there is no such requirement as "standalone" notability, see WP:RELART. AfDs are about this article, not another one.
    Consensus holds that whataboutism WP:WHATABOUT is a really bad argument in AfDs. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 19:19, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    You are misreading that. To have a Wikipedia article on a topic, it must have standalone notability. E.g. RS that proves that it is an inherently notable topic. There aren't such refs on this site. WP:RELART is about having two articles sharing a similar topic, but that issue doesn't apply (as yet) here; although perhaps a FORK is yet to come. "Incel.is" is just not (as yet) an inherently notable site. No proper RS is doing article on it as a site, no real SIGCOV. You should adhere to the acronyms you quote. Aszx5000 ( talk) 19:54, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    See the 10+ sources mentioned earlier in the discussion by me and others. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 19:59, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    None are about the site "Incel.is" as a standalone topic (WP:BASIC will show that). The above is trying to "bend" other RS into being about the site, when it is really about topics related to Incels, and Incels online, but not "Incel.is". Wikipedia is not the place for promotion of a site, it must be in itself notable. You need to find a standalone article about "Incel.is" (as a site), not the topic of Incels, or Incels on the internet, for "Incel.is" to be a Wikipedia article. Aszx5000 ( talk) 20:02, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    This is false. A source was brought up called "incels.me suspended by domain registrar". And if you ever check the others (most of which have the site in their title), they do provide significant coverage about the website. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:12, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Redirect and merge to Incel. If there is consensus to spinout an article on incel online communities (as opposed to... subculture?) it can be retargeted, but not being a redundant content fork just means we can't A10 it, it doesn't mean we must keep every article that anyone decides to spinout for any reason. Aszx5000, if you're looking for the criteria as applied to spinout pages specifically, that would be NOPAGE and not BASIC. Alpha3031 ( tc) 07:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Thanks Alpha3031. I didn't quote NOPAGE as my understanding was that this was about the issue of whether "Incel.is" was a notable site (on its own), which I think was getting blurred into the broader topic area of Incel online communities (possibly a spin-out topic per your comments). I think your suggestion is a good one. Aszx5000 ( talk) 09:03, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Just a question: may I ask why you say WP:NOPAGE applies here? To me, the bullet points of this essay are to be contradicted by the above discussion/sources etc. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 12:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    To clarify, let me bring up the bullet points one by one:
    • Does incel provide additional context? No based on the WP:SIGCOV above. In fact, the articles (if you read them) generalize incels.is to incel, not the other way around.
    • Do related topics provide needed context? I would say no, since the sources (if you read them) are about the website (history, content, moderation).
    • Is this page a "permastub"? Definitely no based on the source analysis giving 10+ sources about this website.
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 12:43, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    not being a redundant content fork just means we can't A10 it, it doesn't mean we must keep every article that anyone decides to spinout for any reason Deletion discussions are based on the page (this website) meeting WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV. You are essentially arguing that this page isn't a content fork but WP:IDONTLIKEIT. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 12:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Responding to both IP comments above, the core issue is that you haven't provided enough RS that cover the site "Incel.is" as a notable topic (i.e. some level of SIGCOV). There is a correlation to the length of an AfD and the amount of RS proving the topic is notable/SIGCOV. Here is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Projectivism, complex topic, poor article, but drowning in RS specifically about the topic. In contrast, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anna Berndtson, no real RS, and the cardinal sin of all (and ironically for which there is no acronym), the Wikipedia article is the main plank of their notability. Save yourself time by just showing at least one (we need 2-3) RS that cover "Incel.is" as a topic (not wider Incels). If there aren't any, then the article will keep coming back to AfD. Aszx5000 ( talk) 13:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Here are WP:RS showing notability (and also provide material to further improve this article):
    Media coverage:
    • [ref 1] The site is the largest incel forum, examples of posts, characteristics of site content. Talks about its administration.
    • [ref 23] Talks about the conflict between Jack Richard Peterson and the site. Talks about the nature of site content.
    • [ref 12] Article dedicated to the website. Site suspension as a result of content violations. Describes site content as "pedophilic, pro-rape" and as a successor to r/incels.
    • [ref 9] Article dedicated to a former member of the site. Characterizes the mixed forum response to that ex member leaving.
    Scholarly coverage:
    • [ref 3] (Proceedings of the ACM on HCI) Explains the factors behind this site's moderation.
    • [ref 5] (Gender and Society) Overview of the website. Change in domain names. Website demographic stats. Site rules.
    Those sources provide WP:SIGCOV. They discuss:
    • the website's history
    • the website's content characteristics
    • the website's rules
    • the website's moderation style
    • the website's two admins
    • interactions between the website and some of its prominent users (a spokesman and an ex moderator)
    • the website's popularity (it is the largest incel forum, among others like 4chan /r9k/, r/ForeverAlone, etc) 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    And as always, WP:WHATABOUTISM and "AfD size comparisons" are particularly weak arguments in AfDs. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:55, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    From your list above (which is the discussion we need here):
    • [ref 1]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.co
    • [ref 23]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.me
    • [ref 12]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; more mention of Incel.me
    • [ref 9]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names
    • [ref 3]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names; not really an RS
    • [ref 5]. One passing mention of "Incel.is".
    If that is the best refs you have on the subject, then this unfortunately would not make "Incel.is" site notable for a standalone article, and it would be a delete. Are there other RS that you want to present on the subject of "Incel.is"? Aszx5000 ( talk) 14:11, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    See WP:COMBINE, in particular Recognising when two sources are on the same topic.
    More importantly, your source analysis is patently false. To show that let's take source 9, which you say has zero mention of .is. Quoting leading some incels.is members to wonder if the site - created in 2017 after Reddit [...]
    Please note that uncontestably misrepresenting sources in AfDs is viewed as WP:GAMING and is considered disruptive. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 14:20, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Sorry, you are back to the acronyms. Just show me RS that covers the "Incel.is" site at a topic (and has some level of SIGCOV), and we are done. Without that, no acronym will save this article long-term. Even if it survived this AfD, it will be back again (and again) given how weak the current RS is. Aszx5000 ( talk) 14:23, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    You are misrepresenting the sources and have shown no indication of having read them (by the lie you made above). 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 14:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Replies are mixed. Some want to keep it, some want to delete it, so I'm relisting to hopefully get better consensus on this.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Cheers! // 🌶️ Jala peño🌶️ Don't click this link! 15:02, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Comment. The issue remains that none of the RS presented are on the site "Incel.is" (they are on related topics of Incels or online Incels), and we have no - as yet - evidence that the site "Incel.is" is notable (i.e. no SIGCOV). It is an emotive topic, and there are walls of text on everything other than producing RS that show the "Incel.is" site has SIGCOV ( Personal attack removed). Lets give it another week to see if such RS can be found that has SIGCOV on the site "Incel.is". Aszx5000 ( talk) 15:42, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: Here are WP:RS showing notability (and also provide material to further improve this article):
    Media coverage:
    • [ref 1] The site is the largest incel forum, examples of posts, characteristics of site content. Talks about its administration.
    • [ref 23] Talks about the conflict between Jack Richard Peterson and the site. Talks about the nature of site content.
    • [ref 12] Article dedicated to the website. Site suspension as a result of content violations. Describes site content as "pedophilic, pro-rape" and as a successor to r/incels.
    • [ref 9] Article dedicated to a former member of the site. Characterizes the mixed forum response to that ex member leaving.
    Scholarly coverage:
    • [ref 3] (Proceedings of the ACM on HCI) Explains the factors behind this site's moderation.
    • [ref 5] (Gender and Society) Overview of the website. Change in domain names. Website demographic stats. Site rules.
    Those sources provide WP:SIGCOV since they discuss:
    • the website's history
    • the website's content characteristics
    • the website's rules
    • the website's moderation style
    • the website's two admins
    • interactions between the website and some of its prominent users (a spokesman and an ex moderator)
    • the website's popularity (it is the largest incel forum, among others like 4chan /r9k/, r/ForeverAlone, etc)
    The fact that they talk about incels.is can easily be verified:
    • by their title
    • by CTRL+Fing one of the site's names
    • by their abstract, if they are scholarly articles.
    • just by reading them
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 17:50, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: To add, WP:SIGCOV does not need to be the main topic of the source material, quoting directly from the guideline's Wikipedia page.

    Yet the poster states The issue remains that none of the RS presented are on the site "Incel.is" (they are on related topics of Incels or online Incels) which contradicts the above. The sources are about the website itself regardless (see above), so this argument misrepresents both sources and policy. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:12, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    And as already stated above:
    [ref 1]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.co
    [ref 23]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.me
    [ref 12]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; more mention of Incel.me
    [ref 9]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names
    [ref 3]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names; not really an RS
    [ref 5]. One passing mention of "Incel.is".
    Are you reading these refs? Aszx5000 ( talk) 18:21, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Your source analysis is patently false. To show that let's take source 9, which you say has zero mention of .is. Quoting directly, leading some incels.is members to wonder if the site - created in 2017 after Reddit [...]. Furthermore, the whole source itself is about the website.
    Please note that uncontestably misrepresenting sources in AfDs is viewed as WP:GAMING and is considered disruptive. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:24, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    • To add, I just saw that you are a new editor. I would encourage to take a look at the guideline WP:AFDDISCUSS. Roughly quoting, the goal of an AfD is to make a well-argued, fact-based case based upon Wikipedia policy and doing so in a civil manner.
    • You should take care to not violate all these points simultanously. In this discussion, you are telling people to stop using "acronyms" (ie. refering to policy), misrepresenting sources (saying X isn't there but in fact it is), and misrepresenting guidelines ( WP:SIGCOV). Also from the above bad faith repeating of a falsehood, you are edging on WP:GASLIGHT.
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Er ... Aszx ... the nomination and the article are both very clear that all those are different names of the site. Second sentence of the nomination, right at the top here. You're basically saying that we shouldn't use any sources about Joe Biden that happen to call him Joseph. -- GRuban ( talk) 00:54, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    They still correctly observe that all but one of the mentions to other domains are either passing or not there at all. small jars t c 01:36, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    "not there at all"
    That is a falsehood which can be verified by anyone wishing to read the sources.
    "passing"
    They were enough to fully backup this article's content (ie. WP:WHATSIGCOV). The article is larger than stub level, per the size criteria essay and the article's Start class assessment. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 01:45, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Also, please note that uncontestably misrepresenting sources in AfDs is WP:GAMING and is considered disruptive (eg. you claimed at least one source did not mention the forum yet this is patently false).
    There cannot be a discussion if a party lies about sources and the other about what's written on policy/guideline/essay pages. That is the common ground to any talk page discussion or AfD debate. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 01:51, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Trying to keep things short: can you please keep the conduct accusations, if you have to, either on their talk pages or ANI? Was debating closing as no-con myself instead of participating but probably would have regretted it either way, don't see the point of the relist though. Anyway, re NOPAGE, was mostly pointing Aszx towards it but thought it was fairly clear its intent is that you put the smaller, more specific page inside the bigger one (obviously I was wrong re clear) but specific forum -> general fits first point and retarget/online communities fits second imo Alpha3031 ( tc) 03:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: Addressing your first point, lying about factual detail in sources (is X present or not) and repeating those lies to bury the conversation when confronted with evidence is WP:GAMING. Likewise, purposeful ignoring of WP:OR practice (repeating .is =/= .me even after presented w/ WP:COMBINE) is also WP:GAMING and Wikilawyering as it argues the words of WP:OR against its intent.
    In light of how this conversation is going I would say it is pretty undue to refer to those as "conduct allegations". That is pretty much as concrete evidence as you can get.
    Now for the second part of your response, I would say a more precise essay to consider is WP:NOMERGE, as it talks about whether to merge or not to merge an article (which is the question here). I already have spoken about those points earlier. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:44, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: To add, not pointing out that policy and sources are misrepresented would do injustice to this discussion. That's why I would say those (substantiated) conduct accusations are relevant to the discussion. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 14:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
blocked sock and BLP violations
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Comment: A few years ago, Diego asked me to write a Wikipedia article on the forum he founded (this forum), I declined. He even knew I disapproved of the forum as a whole. At the time, this forum wasn't even the third most popular incel forum. I don't see any reason to give these guys ego boosts and without naming them. They are essentially just people who seek infamy, bolstered by people reposting screens from their forum for Reddit karma. I can only find 3 non-academic sources which are primarily about this forum. Nonetheless, the incel article is bloated, and there should be a way to deal with that imho 2600:4040:4032:FF00:E0C6:5D5B:9497:7FC3 ( talk) 04:30, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I do want to let people know however that there is a mini industry of people now grifting off this forum (pro and against). It's not large, but they have motives to keep this site topical that are financial/career/status related, rather than encyclopedic related. So to cast that aside, I think it would make more sense for established Wikipedia veterans to peruse the sources rather than IPs. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:E0C6:5D5B:9497:7FC3 ( talk) 05:00, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Keep it has strong sources. Brettyboy93 ( talk) 05:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)Brettyboy93 ( talkcontribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. reply
Also a note that 'brettyboy' was one of incels.is' most active posters source, so it seems there are trolls involved in regging names. A reminder that this forum has no real issue with infamy, the owner keeps around negative articles saved about his forum, and brags about any negative media attention he receives as "winning", even at the seeming cost to his reputation and to the few innocent people seeking dating help getting wrapped up in their cult. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:B0CC:8503:D57C:8761 ( talk) 05:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
xD dude Brettyboy93 ( talk) 05:44, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Am abstaining from any sort of vote, but kindly suggest this be moved to a new article called r/incels (with ==incels.me== section), as this forum is just that with Xenforo, and there are a lot of sources on r/incels. Gorilla wants it all deleted, I think this article could be expanded, but no one so far has shown any interest to in this AFD 2600:4040:4032:FF00:B0CC:8503:D57C:8761 ( talk) 05:49, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I just remembered, BBC made a doc which was half about this forum, explicitly named it as "incels.is" and everything. It aired on BBC1 and BBC3. It's called "Inside the Secret World of Incels". Obviously Wikipedia can't quote the IMDB page but I think watching and summarizing a BBC doc is reliable? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10733470/ Also, added a bit from Talia Lavin's book which has a chapter explicitly naming and dealing with the site, prolly cuz incel wiki called her a nazi 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F031:DC14:89B8:B33D ( talk) 09:16, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Back to propositions, as it stands the Jack Richard Peterson page is about the same size as the .is page currently. I encourage wikipedia users to evaluate every article about incels currently on Wikipedia, as cramming it all into a 40 page incel article makes no sense unless incel were to be trimmed down. Also having the Jack page but not a r/incels/incels.is page would be a weird look. Imho either both should go or stay, or be renamed, but having a Jack page but not an incels.is page was really weird for almost 3-4 years. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F083:716F:5016:452B ( talk) 09:32, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Delete or merge per the arguments made in nom and by small jars - the opening line of Incel is "An incel is a member of an online subculture [...]" (emphasis mine). We don't need to have a complete article on every website that serves a subculture - not to mention that the founders of the site say it thrives off of all the publicity it can get, because it advances their movement. That the article exists (likely made at the site owner's request) is a flagrant WP:SOAP violation. That the site is insufficiently notable (a position I agree with) has also been thoroughly discussed above. Also, a comment: this discussion has been thoroughly bludgeoned. Nearly half the text here is from what is transparently a single person, the self-admitted creator of the article from two different IPs, engaging in repeated gaming and personal attacks. PriusGod ( talk) 09:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Yea for the record I didn't create the article but the New Jersey IP did. Nor am I an incels.me/is/co founder/operator/mod etc. Might make a Youtube video about this whole topic if ppl insinuate that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:4040:4032:ff00:f083:716f:5016:452b ( talkcontribs)

Diego had personally reached out to many people to whitewash and/or bolster his status years ago. I declined. Some people like Parallel Networks (an NGO created by former head of NYPD intelligence) accepted. At this point I don't think the presence of a Wikipedia article effects much one way or the other because everything is already out there now, in multiple newspapers of record. I do however share your skepticism that someone at least with status motives created the article, as users with odd editing histories like Trade and Kevinsanc were begging for this article in public wikipedia talk pages elsewhere. And the forum owner lamarcus seems to be amping up on advertizing for the forum again, on every level. Delete comments have some reasoning, but what do the "merge" votes mean? There used to be a section on incels.is in teh incel article, but Gorilla purposefully scattered that around in the article while retaining the gist of the sentences. In other words, she purposefully broke up anything concrete about the forum as an independent topic. And for reasons other than sock drama. What is the point of trusting someone with a merge who was previously hostile to a section in the article? If people want a merge, they should be explicit about what they want merged and how 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F083:716F:5016:452B ( talk) 09:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Yes, I was speaking about the other IP who wrote an entire extra article in this AfD discussion - presumably if Diego reached out to you, he'd reach out to others and eventually someone would do it. Merge, to me, means that there would be a subsection in the incel article that discusses the actual online communities that serve the subculture, that may potentially mention incels.is by name, but not necessarily. PriusGod ( talk) 16:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Eh, I don't think that incels.is' desire for infamy extends to being known for starting a 'suicide encouragement' forum in those words, which are the words 128.6.36.79, the incels.is article creator wrote. That extends into possible criminal liability for .is/SS owners or former owners. Think they just want to be known for misogyny and racism, which they've really never flinched from, even after the Epik hack and associated further articles 2600:4040:4032:FF00:71DF:80E:AA83:9535 ( talk) 23:21, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
There isn't much way for me to rationalize .is behaviour. Some gangs want to be known for horrible things they do, other times they don't, who knows why. But I don't think 128.6.36.79 showed any bad behaviour or association with .is forum. The most is they may be associated with the grifting industry surrounding .is, which is why it makes sense for veteran Wikipedia users to familiarize themselves with the source material rather than random IP users. Previously, veterans didn't even want to read the source material, hence where we are now, so I'm sure there's some veteran out there who cares about this topic 2600:4040:4032:FF00:D27:8655:D0F7:3185 ( talk) 23:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Anyway if this is deleted (ppl went on almost indiscriminate incel page deletion spree since 2014), should probably have a canned response ready for when peope come asking with the obvious question of why .is isn't considered notable. I wasn't the one to create the article, but certainly won't be the last to suggest its weird there's pages about incels.is spokespeople but not incels.is itself. True crime fandom people are obsessed with elevating this garbage dump forum, so would make sense to think it through instead of lazy reflexes and 30 paragraphs every 2 years. This topic has already been discussed like 3 times before over 5 years with no conclusion that could 'carry over' as it were because it was just a bunch of split second armchair opinions. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F083:716F:5016:452B ( talk) 11:20, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Gorilla already published the names twice in incel, and there was already a BLP discussion on this which came out with consensus to keep and include names in various articles 2600:4040:4032:FF00:D27:8655:D0F7:3185 ( talk) 23:55, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
blocked sock
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
First off, those IPs don't show that
back to topic, there isn't going to be any great, new material in the (near) future, as it seems existing sources were exhausted. The only exception being academic articles. the question is if it deserves its own article or how to merge to the incel article if merge wins, given it was already broken up in the article 2600:4040:4032:FF00:D27:8655:D0F7:3185 ( talk) 00:02, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Comment: You are currently blocked by Bbb for Block evasion. See [1]. I agreed with you on what you said before though. To bring this conversation on track it would be useful for an uninvolved user to:
This would solve the issue of everything being buried in the conversation and help close the AfD. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 00:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply

::::No one wanted to read the sources for 5 years so why would people wanna do that now? All the votes against you are barely citing sources for a reason. Maybe you can drill down on that reason, I don't know what it is. Also I don't know why you, and the previous IP want a milquetoast article per your and their edits. This topic is about a forum which actively encourages crime and mass murder, and in public. So having a TV guide type milquetoast article is dumb. It should either go all out and match the negativity of the sources or not exist. There isn't room for a more positive article because no sources are positive. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:9900:F2CF:B698:BE28 ( talk) 06:34, 6 June 2023 (UTC) (blocked sock) reply

  • Delete or merge per GorillaWarfare and small jars, and per both WP:MERGEREASON #2 and especially #4. DFlhb ( talk) 03:51, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Can you explain why WP:NOMERGE would not apply here? The incel article warrants a split based on its size alone WP:SIZERULE. And both articles are discrete topics (subculture, website) with each meeting GNG. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:42, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Comment Quite a lot of changes are now being made to the page. I haven't looked through the new version of the article yet, but that would be worthwhile in case it dredges up anything relevant to notability. My vote remains the same on the assumption that previous, quite, um, dedicated, keep voters would have already brought up any game-changing sources. small jars t c 07:08, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Updated article is more or less the incel overlap + Talia Lavin + note that Toby Young's Spectator article is deleted, and also presents .is as an independent topic. WP:MERGEREASON is predicated on, amonng other things, whether incel is too lengthy. If voters want more sources they'd have to dig out any one of the (many) academic articles which explicitly name or are on .me/.co/.is. I 'aint doin that work, nor do I know how Wikipedia treats academic sources. Altho not a vote, keeps are 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4, OwenBlacker, SapphireWilliams, and GRuban. If they wanna dig out sources they can. I don't like academia or what was the first version of the article 3BA4 wanted. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:3892:69F2:6957:EBDE ( talk) 07:19, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Regardless if there are new sources brought up, those edits should be reverted since they were made by the above IP range, which was by Bbb23 for block evasion (also see Special:Contributions/2600:4040:4032:FF00:3892:69F2:6957:EBDE/45 for this range's prior disruption on the incel and Sanctioned Suicide articles). Also, all of his comments here should be stricked out per WP:SOCKSTRIKE. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:38, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
To add, I do not know the policy in detail but I believe some of his edits can be kept since he is a good faith contributor. Though from a quick look at it they seem to not uphold WP:MOS. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 15:16, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
IP, you have hatted PriusGod and Brettyboy93's !votes under "blocked sock and BLP violations". I'm not keeping up with the situation you're describing with the blocked IP range, so I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it seems like a mistake because I don't see anything particularly off about their !votes. small jars t c 16:24, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
It was sandwiched in unsourced WP:ASPERSIONS. I tried adding more hats but I couldn't get it right on my phone. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 16:37, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
The range Special:Contributions/2600:4040:4032:FF00:3892:69F2:6957:EBDE/45 was already hatted by User:Freedom4U back in March in the Sanctioned Suicide and incel talk pages for block evasion. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 16:41, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Reinstating my hatted !vote as it did not appear to have been removed from discussion for a legitimate reason 16:27, 6 June 2023 (UTC) Delete or merge per the arguments made in nom and by small jars - the opening line of Incel is "An incel is a member of an online subculture [...]" (emphasis mine). We don't need to have a complete article on every website that serves a subculture - not to mention that the founders of the site say it thrives off of all the publicity it can get, because it advances their movement. That the article exists (likely made at the site owner's request) is a flagrant WP:SOAP violation. That the site is insufficiently notable (a position I agree with) has also been thoroughly discussed above. Also, a comment: this discussion has been thoroughly bludgeoned. ( Personal attack removed) PriusGod ( talk) 09:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    First, by saying X person is Y other person without log-based evidence, you are casting WP:ASPERSIONS. Second, you are misrepresenting WP:SOAP, since it deals with poorly sourced, puffery articles. The article is neither unsourced nor POV: in fact I heard here that it passed an AfC review, it was not just created out of nowhere.
    Even the page WP:AFD says Accusations of vanity and other motives should be avoided and is not itself a reason for deletion. You are derailing this conversation from one about notability to one about ad hominems on the Keep !voters. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 16:55, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    That the site is insufficiently notable (a position I agree with) has also been thoroughly discussed above
    You made your all your post to this AfD about ad hominems except this one WP:ITSNOTNOTABLE sentence. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 17:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Currently replying on talk to avoid a tangent forming. PriusGod ( talk) 17:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply

*I change my vote to delete, B342 or whoever is gunning for a 'moderate' article instead of one which matches the negativity and content of the sources, and Wikpedia community is not interested in the sources enough required to keep it an independent article. Any valuable material can be merged, but its mostly overlap. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:61E7:D218:28EF:991F ( talk) 17:57, 6 June 2023 (UTC) (blocked sock) reply


Comment: To bring this conversation back on topic, I wanted to ask the question why do the merge !voters here think a merge is necessary in spite of the length concerns brought up by User:OwenBlacker, User:GRuban and I. I have seen the points of WP:OVERLAP and WP:CONTEXT from WP:MERGEREASON brought up by User:DFlhb but I am not convinced by them. To explain:

  • Overlap cites "topics with the same name" (like Greenland island and country) or things like "flammable" and "non-flammable" as the chief examples. Here we have a website and a subculture (think bodybuilding and bodybuilding.com) so I believe the topics are not close enough to fall in that criteria. They are completely different things conceptually, a website and a subculture. The main article covers the concept which people identify as, popular use of the term, terrorist attacks (a good 75% of which predate the forum), and websites or gathering spaces like 4chan, Discord, subreddits and this. This article covers this website's history, rules, moderation, studies dedicated to it, interactions with three notable members (two of which have their own articles on Wikipedia). This is just too much extra stuff to cover in the already-large incel article. Theses and journal articles have been written about the site: having at least some of the info about this site disappear (and be less clearly navigable in the main article) would penalize the researchers in this subject area (or whoever else might require encyclopedic content about the incel subculture).
  • Context: if a short article requires the background material or context from a broader article in order to understand it. It then cites the example of a minor book character. If the "Background" section were to be removed, then article would still be well readable, since it is ultimately talks about a website and most of the info are this website's rules, suspensions from domains, rhetoric, which does not require any particular context to write about.

That is why I think there is no true WP:MERGEREASON. In turn, the criteria for WP:NOMERGE read:

Merging should be avoided if

  • The resulting article would be too long or clunky
  • The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles, or
  • The topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, with each meeting GNG, even if short

For point 1, I believe there is consensus for that, since multiple users excluding me have brought this up and the nominator is currently improving the main article to address that. For point 2, the sources brought up during this AfD give many avenues to expand upon (the two admins, the site's content, rules, history). The coverage isn't just one-off. Multiple journal articles were dedicated to the website, as stated in their abstracts (which is also pretty good evidence for notability, especially for a simple website). For point 3, the consensus on GNG was first acknowledged by the relister even before I came here. They wrote in their relist comment: For further input... since it's unclear if the article should be kept or merged. Aside from me and other non-established contributors (here), User:GRuban has appraised the sources as meeting GNG, and there hasn't really been a strong challenge to that (aside of WP:NOTNOTABLE assertions in the heat of the debate). The discussion focuses mostly on the need to merge, which I am trying to settle here. And finally for discrete subjects this article is even more discrete than the other as it talks simply about a website and not a subculture which spans all over the internet, has had violence attributed to it, has entered common vocabulary and the definition of which is pretty complex, at the very least beyond just being a single website created in 2018. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 04:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Other points to consider:
  • WP:WHENSPLIT suggests a split when one section is too large.
  • In his own article Jack Richard Peterson is only notable for being a user and spokesperson for the incels.is site.
2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 04:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
TL;DR
The main article incel has WP:COATRACK tendencies and merging incels.is to it amounts to adding another coat. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 05:27, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Comment: New source released June 6th, which is about the site and mentions the site by name: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448231176777. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:10, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

An omen that this AfD has been going on way too long. small jars t c 06:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Looking at the thing: IDK, the name of the site seems to be absent from the title and abstract, but appears as their source of data. Seems to be the standard model. small jars t c 06:16, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
They say "of a popular website" in the abstract but name it thoroughly in the rest of the study and the figures. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
The passage [...] produced by users of incels.is. We refer to this group specifically when we use the term “incel” throughout our analyses and discussion. is particularly relevant. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:26, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
"Analyses and discussion" does not include the abstract, so it can't be inferred that that's what they were talking about from the start. I think you would need the abstract to indicate that the article is, at least in part, directly concerned with the site for sigcov. (Unless the bits after the weird grey line are also the abstract?? I'm assuming that's just the introduction missing a heading) small jars t c 06:38, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Off topic, but they managed to misspell it as "incel.is" twice! Papers need edit buttons. small jars t c 06:41, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
A paragraph taken from near the conclusion:
Indeed, users on incels.is have already circulated a plan to address their potential deplatforming, while incels and other manosphere groups use deplatforming and censorship as “proof” that left-wing and feminist groups are targeting men by restricting free speech (Marwick and Lewis, 2017). As our results suggest that most men that contribute to incels.is arrive as misogynists, specific responses are necessary to disrupt such misogyny.
A sample of the article's data section:
The vast majority of participants on incels.is use misogynistic terms. We find that 81.2% of participants used at least one misogynistic term during the study period (see Table 1).
Other sentence talking about an offshoot of this site:
For instance, the incels.is wiki references many academic papers to advance misogynistic arguments.
Looking at it, there is SIGCOV, even with the technicality that the abstract says "a popular website". 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:47, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Though the paper usually treats incels.is as more of a databank than an interesting subject in itself, you are right that it does touch on some more direct observations on the site. It's worth seeing what these claims are themselves cited to in order to search for more in-depth sources. Doing this with the last quote you gave, for example: it turns out to be sourced directly to https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill, which does not seem promising to me, but you might get better results from doing the same to some of their other claims. small jars t c 11:23, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
This paper is already a secondary source. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 13:32, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Yes, but my point is that the things you bring up are not in-depth enough. They are brief summaries of things other sources said. I'm just suggesting checking those other sources in case they are RS that talk about those things in more detail. small jars t c 13:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
In-depth just means you are able to write an article about it without OR. The article may even be short since this is a discrete subject. That's clearly the case here, even with this only one source. It is not a "gotcha" term or an arbitrary moving goalpost. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:44, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Also, you might want to read WP:100W. There is much more than 100 words of coverage, even in this article alone. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Also, once again, this paper is a secondary source and coverage is measured by secondary sources, not "sources of secondary sources". If you find a newspaper article, you are not expected to "cite the source of the journalist instead". This is absurd and defeats the purpose of secondary sources. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 15:09, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not trying to debate what's counted as sigcov for the purpose of this article, as this has been done more than extensively above. Just trying to suggest a way that stronger material might be found. small jars t c 15:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I think this belongs better in the Talk page then, since you say the presence of SIGCOV is already settled. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 15:41, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Delete or merge per smalljars. Nythar ( 💬- 🍀) 10:05, 7 June 2023 (UTC) Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Nythar ( talkcontribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. reply
    This is becoming extremely disruptive, 2001:48f8:3004:fc4. On what basis do you think Nythar has been canvassed? You can't just go around tagging users as canvassed when they !vote against your preferred outcome. From what I can see, Nythar is an active editor who routinely contributes to deletion discussions, and if this is based on your absurd claim below that SmallJarsWithGreenLabels was canvassing when they merely mentioned this discussion at Talk:Incel, Nythar has never contributed to that article nor its talk page, so even if that was the case, there's really no basis to think they were aware of that discussion or watchlisting the page. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:41, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    I had this concern based on the del. reason being WP:PERX (where X is precisely the canvasser) and this !vote having occurred right after the canvassing done at Talk:Incels. Also, the contribution history indicates this user has "awoken" to post here (nevermind that I only read the first digit). So thats why I had this concern, genuinely.
    Anyways, WP:NOTAVOTE makes this a moot issue.
    To avoid this conversation from spiralling away again, I would like to redirect it towards WP:AFDDISCUSS. There are still unanswered questions directed to nom and merge voters about WP:COATRACK of incel and WP:NOTMERGE of incels.is. Also the sources already presented (and quoted) are pretty damning in giving standalone notability to the site. Yet there does not seem to be a complete response to that from merge voters, just picking apart some details. See above. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Also, you are still calling the canvas notice "absurd", yet it fits three of the four sufficient conditions of WP:INAPPNOTE (biased, audience, transparency). 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:53, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    To add about the "transparency" bit which I hadn't discussed much earlier. The canvassing guidelines state:
    Soliciting support other than by posting direct messages, such as using a custom signature with a message promoting a specific position on any issue being discussed. is characteristic of inappropriate notification. Here, the canvassing message was crafted within a talk post. It made sure to:
    • use tone to discredit IP editors in general, and levy incomplete conduct accusations (bludgeoning is rampant on both !voting sides here).
    • encourage a merge vote
    • link the AfD
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:59, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    I don't see how you can think this was canvassing, unless you really believe I conspired with GW to make an edit to incel that she would have plausible reason to revert, so that I would then be obliged to post a topic in line with BRD that would conveniently lead me to mention the arguments made in this AfD, which would frankly be insane when there are much easier ways people routinely get away with canvassing. small jars t c 22:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Canvassing is just linking to an AfD while presenting a biased point of view on a possible decision outcome in a biased location (which you have done), that's it. Tagging canvassing is not an accusation of bad faith, it is just part of the XfD (and wider discussion) etiquette. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 22:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    From the second paragraph: Canvassing is notification done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way, so yes it is an accusation of bad faith. small jars t c 23:17, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    I reasonably say you had the intention to influence this discussion, based on what I presented above. I am just trying not to be rude.
    Also, I'm not accusing of anything beyond that, namely WP:POINT talk page posting: you and GorillaWarfare are just putting words in my mouth. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 23:28, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Comment: This discussion (delete vote) has been cavassed at Talk:Incel. (diff: [2]). Also, I should point there is obviously WP:DUCK off-site canvassing for some keep !votes too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:48f8:3004:fc4:48ea:35ce:a536:b342 ( talk) 17:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    • Please look more closely at behavioral guidelines before accusing editors of going against them. The scattershot accusations you've been making are really starting to test the bounds of WP:CIVIL. Simply mentioning the existence of another discussion is not canvassing. Even if SmallJarsWithGreenLabels had posted an explicit invitation at Talk:Incel for people to come to this discussion it would probably not be canvassing, per WP:APPNOTE ("An editor who may wish to draw a wider range of informed, but uninvolved, editors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following: ... The talk page of one or more directly related articles.") GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 17:18, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
      The passage that is considered canvassing is:
      If you can chew through the BLUD from some keep-voting IPs, I think that there is a general consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Incels.is that the topic of this article is a culture and not "incels" as such, as stated in arguments made by myself user:PriusGod that incels.is belongs within the scope of this article, which have been affirmed by a few other contributors. Separately, I cannot find any direct verification of the definition given in the lede in the sources it is cited to.
      The expression "IP BLUD" is clearly biased (also clearly discriminates against logged out or new editors). The assertion "incels.is belongs within the scope of this article" quite clearly encourages a merge vote. Furthermore, it addressed to an audience that is in support of deleting this article (the nominator of this discussion). See this excerpt in WP:CANVAS:
      The audience must not be selected on the basis of their opinions—for example, if notices are sent to editors who previously supported deleting an article 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 17:25, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
        • You're suggesting that smalljars canvassed me, the person who nominated the article for deletion and has already expressed my opinion in this deletion discussion? Come on, let's be serious. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 17:29, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
          It clearly violates the "Campaigning" section WP:INAPPNOTE. Also, it violates the "Partisan" section since it is addressed to an involved audience. It was not a friendly notice in form nor in content. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 17:34, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
        First of all, I'm just going to call the accusation of CANVAS ridiculous and ignore it. To the second part of the complaint: I am strongly opposed to discrimination against IPs (which you can verify if you really want by reading my votes on the latest community wishlist). I've struck the previous wording at talk:incel and am sorry if my comment came across as insinuating of anything. My description was meant to be based concretely on the fact that all of the worst bludgeoning happens to have come from keep voting IPs so far. small jars t c 19:00, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
        as stated in arguments made by myself user:PriusGod that incels.is belongs within the scope of this article, which have been affirmed by a few other contributors
        You are pushing to merge. The question here is merge versus no merge. That's obvious campaigning. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:07, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Comment: To help close the debate, here is a detailed source assessment for this site only. I have quoted specific passages that show standalone WP:SIGCOV. (update: I have rewritten the article with those new sources and removed extra material not about the site. The old version had unclear source names like ":3". Also the new sources now link clearly the founders and the different site URLs together).


Source assessment table:
Source Independent? Reliable? Significant coverage? Count source toward GNG?
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit Yes Yes per WP:VOX. Yes Site mentioned 14 times. Key passage about site: This kind of mass killer praise — referring to Lépine as a “saint” in one’s username — is part of the culture of incels.co. Yet in the immediate wake of another mass killing, advocacy for violence isn’t treated as a serious concern by the forum’s administrator. Yes
https://mashable.com/article/incels-me-domain-suspended-by-registry Yes Yes per WP:MASHABLE (non-sponsored article, obviously) Yes Source about site suspension. Key passage: On Tuesday, the .ME registry, which controls the entire .ME domain database, published a post explaining that they -- and not a domain registrar like GoDaddy -- had suspended the domain. The registry says the domain was suspended over anti-abuse policy infractions based on the promotion of acts of violence and hate speech on the website. Incels.me has been inaccessible since Oct. 15. [...] The domain registry says it was monitoring incels.me since May after being notified about the website’s possible connection to a domestic terror attack. Yes
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sympathy-for-the-incel Yes ? WP:DAILYBEAST. No consensus. Yes This particular site's ' rules and culture (does not allow femcels, which are part of the incel community). Key passage about site: On the incels.me forum, a stated list of rules for participation include guidelines that are stricter than most elite private clubs in America. No women allowed. No exception. Yes, this means that a forum dedicated to decrying success with women has as one of its primary rules a focus on enforced isolation. Other rules also brutally shut out any chance to provide advice or mentorship to other young men. A few months ago, when Peterson was using the forum, he suddenly found that he was banned from having certain privileges in the chatrooms. Even the incels, it seemed, were rejecting him. ? Unknown
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448231176777 Yes Yes Peer-reviewed article in a high-impact journal ( New Media & Society). Yes Whole article about this site (url mentioned 39 times). Key passages about site:
  • Furthermore, we find that there is no statistically significant overall association between a user’s post frequency and their use of misogynistic terms, which suggests most users posting on incels.is do not become misogynistic on incels.is but arrive already endorsing misogyny.
  • The vast majority of participants on incels.is use misogynistic terms. We find that 81.2% of participants used at least one misogynistic term during the study period (see Table 1). In contrast, 67.7% of participants used neutral terms for women (e.g. “women”), meaning that some users exclusively refer to women using misogynistic terms.
  • For instance, the incels.is wiki references many academic papers to advance misogynistic arguments. While appearing scientific, incels frequently cite single studies, ignore counter claims, or cherry pick examples, such as citing a study produced by Vagisil to body shame women (Incels.wiki, 2022c).
Yes
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3476057 Yes Yes Peer-reviewed article in a reputed journal (see Journal of the ACM) Yes About migration from r/incels to this site. Key passages talking precisely about this site:
  • one of the subreddits’ former core members, seargentincel, mentions that he had already discussed moving the community outside of Reddit with moderators. According to him, when the subreddit was banned, he created the standalone website incels.co, and former r/Incels members quickly organized the migration in Discord channels.
  • Our analysis suggests that community-level moderation measures significantly hamper activity and growth in the communities we study. For both communities, there was a substantial decrease in the number of newcomers, active users, and posts after the moderation measure. Yet, this tells only part of the story: we also find an increase in the relative activity for both communities: per user, substantially more daily posts occurred on the fringe websites (referring to both thedonald.win and incels.is)
Yes
https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-culture-warlords-talia-lavin-hachette-books-163023083.html Yes Yes WP:RS/P indicates Engadget as reliable. Yes Investigative journalism book with website as one of the subjects. Key passage about the particular site: Incels.co has the feeling of a barroom boast-off. The vibe is giddy but competitive—users intoxicated by the freedom of a space where they are free to express prejudice with as much violence as they wish. There’s a sense of one-upmanship that pervades the place, a desire to heighten the level of extremity of speech, graphic images rendered, racism expressed. It’s also a forum for the encouragement of despair. As in every incel space, the dual forces of despair and rage fight for space, but on this particular board, the atmosphere is heightened. One post was created by a user whose avatar was the face of Scott Beierle, the man who had shot two women and himself to death at a Tallahassee yoga studio. (talks about the difference between site and other incel communities) Yes
http://blog.nameshield.com/blog/2019/01/10/the-shutting-down-of-incels-me-the-involuntary-single-website Yes Yes Corporate blog of a cybersecurity company Yes Whole article is about this site's domain suspension as a result of terrorism connections (same topic as Mashable source) Yes
https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2022.2129014 Yes Yes Peer-reviewed article in Terrorism and Political Violence Yes Paper's subject is incels.is. Mentions useful details about site itself, like linking the .co, .me, .is domains together:

An alternative to Reddit was created, incels.me. Incels.me was then suspended in 2018 due to violating the .me registry's anti-abuse policy and its successot, incels.co was refused renewal of their domain name. The most recent iteration of the site--which is essentially copied from other domains--is incels.is and it has successfully maintaoned much of its membership from previous sites. Incels.is' rules limit participation to those who identify as Incels or those who have swallowed the Black pill, meaning they may not identify as an Incel but ascribe to the ideology and are indistinguishable from other members.. It also talks about the site's discussion tags: [...] The third option, "rope," refers to giving up, either by ceasing all attempts at self-improvement and LDAR (lay down and rot) or through suicide. These strategies are common enough that they have their own separate discussion tags on incels.is.

Yes
Supreme Gentlemen or Radicalized Killers: Analyzing the Radicalization Paths of Involuntary Celibate Killers and the Role of Online Incel Forums (Percich, 2021) Yes No declared conflict of interest in the thesis. ? Low-citation Masters thesis ( WP:SCHOLARSHIP). Though any conclusions made here are unreliable, I believe it is a reliable secondary source for basic info about this site. ? Contains info about particular rules on the site: incels.co has recently tightened its new user account account approvals as an individual now has to log in via their home WIFI (usage of public WIFI disqualifies you), asks whether the user is female or male, and to explain their situation. ? Unknown
http://rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/incel-civil-war-girlfriend-komesarj-1234724278 Yes Yes This article is filed in the "culture" section of Rolling Stone. Yet, WP:RS/P#Rolling Stone (culture) says there is consensus that Rolling Stone (culture) is reliable, albeit requiring attribution. Yes Article about an ex-moderator "Komesarj" departing due to having found a girlfriend and resulting backlash. Key passage:

On Tuesday, in a thread on the forum Incels.is that has since been deleted (it remains available through the Internet Archive), a moderator who goes by the name "Komesarj" announced his departure from the group. He explained that he has already taken several months off from the site to focus on self-improvement. [...] Yet many of the first responses were positive, congratulating Komesarj on "ascending." Soon enough, however, other incels were pestering him for more details, accusing him of "braghing" or rubbing his success in their faces, calling him a fake incel, and speculating that he'd made the whole story up.

Yes
This table may not be a final or consensus view; it may summarize developing consensus, or reflect assessments of a single editor. Created using {{ source assess table}}.

2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 01:02, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply

To reiterate my "keep" argument more concisely:
I think that saying: all sources about incels.is are actually about incel is as absurd as saying that all sources about patriots.win are actually about the alt-right. Not all alt-righters are members of that site, and not all of incels are members of incels.is. Yet both are currently the biggest sites dedicated to the alt-right and incels respectively. And both are predominantly online subcultures.
Currently, r/The_Donald's article (older, more notable name for patriots.win) is cross-linked at Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign. This means that precedent is in favor of keeping the site's standalone article, especially when it has SIGCOV and presumed notability (see my source assessment table).
In general, such merges are harmful to Wikipedia as it encourages turning related topics into one big WP:COATRACK article. The current incel article has only one passing mention of this site and is a coatrack of incel shootings, online incel communities, and the everyday incel term/insult. Reading it, I don't even know what "incel" means anymore (in fact this is currently a debate on its talk page). Merging this page too to the main article would make the article even more unclear to readers. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 01:34, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
You somehow missed that your engadget source is in fact an excerpt from Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, which is not as much about incel.co as it is about extremist chatrooms in general, of which incels.co seems to have been the one example that happened to be excerpted by engadget among a multitude given in the book. small jars t c 02:51, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Per WP:SIGCOV,
Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material
Your point contradicts the notability guideline. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 03:01, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I doubt your evaluation of the sources based on your inability even to accurately identify what they are or who they come from. small jars t c 03:58, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
You are just nitpicking a technicality in 1 out of 6 sources I brought forward to disprove(?) all the sources. It isn't even relevant. The book can be cited instead and this Engadget article then shows the book is a WP:RS. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 04:10, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Comment: I have rewritten the article using the sources brought up during the AfD, adding extra coverage about incels.is and removing superfluous content not about this website. Of note: the new Zimmerman source explicitly links all the urls together. Aside from that, I have also WP:COMBINED other relevant info from the new sources. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 21:35, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply

I also found a new report here:
https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/spitting-out-the-blackpill-evaluating-how-incels-present-themselves-in-their-own-words-on-the-incel-wiki/
talking about the incels.is wiki and incels.is by name. I have incorporated it the main article, along that of the related Gizmodo page. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 22:52, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Comment: I have improved the article significantly to ~900 words readable prose only using sources which refer to "incels.is" or obvious synonyms like "incels.co" or "Lamarcus Small's incel forum". I think this should be enough to spin it off, since it is now 4 times bigger than the previous version. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 02:04, 10 June 2023 (UTC) reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 merge‎ to Incel.

The discussion has completely run out of steam and left everyone exhausted, with a number of personal attacks being thrown around. I see a mixture of those wanting to keep, merge or delete the article - however, many of the rationales were refuted. This suggests a "no consensus" close, but I am reluctant to read that as a the consensus as it retains the full article, and there are a significant proportion of editors that explicitly didn't want that.

Therefore, I have to conclude that the appropriate compromise would be to merge, and I hope that's something that everyone, on all sides of the debate, can accept. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 08:35, 10 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Incels.is


Incels.is (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)
(Find sources:  Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs· FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I don't think there's sufficient notability for a standalone article about this site, which I think should probably be redirected to the primary topic at Incel. Most of the references mention the site (under one of its various TLDs — .is, .me, or .co), but are primarily focused on describing the incel subculture rather than specifics about this one website. Furthermore, most of the content here is already included at Incel. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:22, 18 May 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Delete or merge: superficially, there's significant news coverage of this site, but since it's essentially the same community and phenomenon as in the deleted subreddit, this coverage is better contextualised at incel, which it already is, according to nom. small jars t c 17:37, 19 May 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Merge with incel. I would hate to see all the effort that has been put into this article go to waste, so I encourage anyone involved in this topic area to salvage its content elsewhere—both at the main incel article, and anywhere else where it may prove valuable. Kurtis (talk) 20:16, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Those sources are all in-depth and independent. Therefore, they are sufficient to prove the article does not violate WP:GNG. It is also to note that the creator of this AfD states that they are the creator of the incel article. I believe that this should be a factor in discussing this nomination. Finally, I am disclosing that I am the creator of this article, under a different dynamic IP. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 20:53, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Though these are about "incels.is", but all but one of them turn out to be about the "incel" online community in general, which just happens to be centred on that site at present. Our incel article is already explicitly about the online community, so the independent notability of the site runs shallow. However, your third source is interesting: it provides a mathematical analysis of "incels.co" (the same site) as a website in its own right, in terms of the dynamics of content moderation and how the incel community’s expungement from reddit may have modified their views and behaviour on the new forum. If we had a couple more sources on this level, I would vote keep, but for now this source is better used within incel. small jars t c 21:44, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
In the first source, the abstract states This paper presents a study of the (now suspended) online discussion forum Incels.me and its users, involuntary celibates or incels, a virtual community of isolated men without a sexual life, who see women as the cause of their problems and often use the forum for misogynistic hate speech and other forms of incitement.
I think this invalidates you saying all but one of the sources talk about the website and not the community.
Finally, for the second source, if you have access to the paper through your institution, the website is central to the study and its characteristics are described therein. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:49, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
ad hominem on nom
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Comment. I learned that the nominator is a site admin. I find it quite immature and petty for a site admin to nominate an article in which she has an editorial interest (in her page she says she created the incel article), all while completely bulldozing through the AfD etiquette and not citing a single example of policy (edit: *policy violation. Also, I forgot to mention more importantly that she did not declare her editorial COI, as creator and major contributor of the incel article, while making this nomination). 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:19, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I'll add a note to my nomination about creating the page, since you seem concerned that it might influence this discussion, but it's not clear to me what exactly would be improper about this in your eyes, or "immature" or "petty". If anything I would think my editorial interest in the topic would make me more keen to see additional articles about related subjects, not less. The idea of an "editorial COI" is bizarre, though — people routinely contribute to editing and discussing pages on the same topic area.
Regarding citing some "policy violation", the page doesn't meet the notability guideline — which I think I've made quite clear in my nomination statement. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 21:33, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I have shown above it meets WP:GNG. Furthermore, it does not fall into any category of WP:NOT. Hence, according to the notability guideline you gave, this gives the subject presumed notability. It is your burden of proof to show it does not have notability in spite of the significant, in-depth coverage.
The reason you have given "Most of the references mention the site (under one of its various TLDs — .is, .me, or .co), but are primarily focused on describing the incel subculture rather than specifics about this one website" goes against the examples of in-depth coverage of the website I have provided and which can be verified by other people in this discussion. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:41, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
This is not a courtroom, and there is not a "burden of proof" or some rule that articles that don't fall into any of the very specific examples at WP:NOT are somehow inherently notable.
I've stated that I don't believe the sources used at incels.is — a superset of the four you've listed here — establish sufficient notability for a standalone article. It's clear that you disagree. The purpose of this discussion is to gain input from others, who will also evaluate the sourcing in the article, on whether or not those sources are sufficient to warrant a standalone article. Once consensus is established, the article will be kept or merged/redirected/deleted according to that consensus.
( edit conflict) Regarding your suggestion that the sources establish in-depth coverage, I disagree. The sources here often describe incels.is because it is a useful corpus to study when trying to study the incel phenomenon. But most of the sources here are describing the incel subculture and its members, rather than the website itself. Furthermore, while the first three sources are interesting, they are primary research papers and not as useful for establishing notability compared to secondary sources. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 21:47, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
You are not contributing to the discussion. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:51, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
If you wish to completely discount those sources (unlike the policy suggests), there leaves multiple (at least two) other sources to appreciate, the third one I provided earlier and https://mashable.com/article/incels-me-domain-suspended-by-registry. So I believe WP:GNG is satisfied by a long shot. Also, it is disingenuous to edit your comment after my reply without marking it, which is why I restored the order of the messages. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:02, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Please do not edit my messages. We had an edit conflict as you left a comment at the same time I was expanding on mine, as I noted in my edit summary ("ec"). I have stated my position on the article and its sources, and given that you now seem to be resorting to bludgeoning and attacking me personally I am going to end this conversation, as it's stopped being productive and threatens to drown out outside opinions on the article's suitability for inclusion as a standalone page. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 22:05, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
The volume of replies alone does not constitute the concept described in WP:BLUDGEONING, so I consider this a false accusation. You were the one stonewalling the conversation right until your second-to-last reply. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Think of it this way: you've lumped several domain names into one topic, as they have all served the purpose of hosting the incel community. If we extend this to lump in one more place that has historically served this purpose, r/incels, we have the exact topic of a much better article that already exists. small jars t c 22:09, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
By WP:COMBINE, the transitive property of the domain names is a routine calculation. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:14, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
The difference between the subreddit and the site is also transitive, according to the majority of reliable sources. small jars t c 22:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
One can verify that there are no sources saying the creators of the site were admins of the subreddit. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:32, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
The point is that they are treated as the same effective community by the majority of sources, not that those sources explicitly verify that there is continuity, i.e., the difference is not notable, whether or not the sameness is verified. small jars t c 22:39, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
That is not reflected in the sources (see my earlier source analysis, which you can yourself verify). 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:40, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Hi IP, saying disparaging things about probably one the most respected editors here is not helpful. See also WP:No personal attacks. She did cite stand-alone notability as the concern which is what AfD is meant to determine. You have stated your argument from a notability perspective so leave it others to consider. (Note I am the AfC reviewer who accepted the draft). S0091 ( talk) 21:37, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I will consider a more neutral tone, however, I did wanted to state her failure to follow WP:AFDFORMAT by not stating her publicly-verifiable COI, as well as her making blanket statements about sourcing all while not mentioning any example. Both are disingenuous acts meanwhile the person herself most definitely makes valuable contributions to Wikipedia which I already appreciated looking at her user page and contributions earlier. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 21:45, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
You may wish to familiarize yourself with WP:COI. I assume you are not actually intending to allege that I have some kind of personal or financial connection to incels.is, or (somehow) to the subculture as a whole. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 22:00, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I argue that you have a COI as at least one website refers your main Wikipedia contribution as incels (source to this BLP statement: https://www.yahoo.com/now/molly-white-crypto-skeptics-122044537.html) and you are most known as a Wikipedia contributor and writer. Given that, I believe it is hard to make edits and requests around this topic anymore while not being mindful of your PR. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:10, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
That is frankly absurd, but WP:COIN is thataway if you want to actually pursue that argument. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 22:13, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
You obviously don't get into a COI over a topic area just by writing an article in that topic area. That would make every editor a COI editor. small jars t c 22:03, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
I argued that it is a form of COI in my response above, but I think you can also appreciate this kind of nomination with the lay term pettiness. 130.156.160.91 ( talk) 22:13, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
IP, it's not that you should consider a neutral tone towards another editor, you must do that. And no offense, there is no way in hell you are going to be able to prove GW has a COI with this topic because it does not exist. More importantly, following that line of thought will just distract from the goal of determining notability so just drop it. Let your !vote with sources stand on its on own. S0091 ( talk) 22:14, 20 May 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Weak keep it's a bit hard finding sources for this since lots of news articles avoid naming the forum (understandably), but there are at least two studies ( the one above and this report I found, which doesn't mention the site by name but which is clearly alluding to it), plus at least one substantive new article ( 1). Combined with other, briefer mentions in news, I think thati it passes GNG. AryKun ( talk) 06:55, 21 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    • Changing to a merge on further thought, since arguments further down about how this could be contextualized in a forums section in the main intel argument have convinced me. AryKun ( talk) 13:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Ping @ GorillaWarfare, @ Kurtis, @ SmallJarsWithGreenLabels, and @ TheInsatiableOne, incase any of you missed this. AryKun ( talk) 12:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    My 2c: I'm not terribly convinced by the introduction of a report that "clearly alludes to" the site, which seems iffy from a WP:OR perspective. This is another source that is describing incels and their online activity by looking at one of their largest forums, but is primarily focused on the subculture and individuals rather than the specific site — something that is made particularly clear by this source's decision not to even name the forum. As for the Mashable article, that is already used in this article. It is at least a source that is more about the website than about the incel phenomenon, but I don't think it's enough to confer notability without some other sources (preferably from more reliable sources, see WP:RSP#Mashable) like it. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:24, 22 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    If the site is not explicitly named in the source then the source is not usable. I removed at least a couple sources along with the related content when reviewing the draft because the site was not named, therefore failed WP:V (much less notability). S0091 ( talk) 18:58, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Weak keepIncel is a pretty long article, I don't see the harm in this being repurposed to a {{ main}} for the subtopic of incel online communities more generally, including the subreddit it spawned from, but I don't feel strongly about whether the website itself (on its various domain names) is itself notable and have no real desire to read the handful of academic papers mentioned above in order to form a stronger opinion either way. —  OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk; please {{ ping}} me in replies) 17:44, 25 May 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: For further input... since it's unclear if the article should be kept or merged.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, CycloneYoris talk! 01:39, 26 May 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Keep per WP:RELART which tells us to keep a related article if it is itself notable, and per WP:GNG of the sources about the website. Also, WP:NOMERGE. The main article is very large and has a scope problem. If anything, minding WP:OR, the sources in common should be used to talk about this website, but not the whole terrorist movement. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 22:34, 26 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Welcome to Wikipedia and congratulations on your first edit. How did you find this discussion? GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    The main article is very large...
    Incel is medium length and incels.is is a stub.
    ...and has a scope problem.
    If it was about the term itself, incels.is would be out of scope, but the topic is the online subculture and its effects as described in the lede, and this is stuck to throughout the article. small jars t c 12:27, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    • This page is start class (more than 150 words of prose; not a stub). The main article is 8500 words readable prose, which according to WP:SIZERULE can justify splitting based on size alone. Hencewhy I am suggesting following WP:NOTMERGE. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
      I admit I misjudged the length of incel (thought the reference section made up more of the text than it does), but incels.is is clearly a stub, and merging will increase the length of incel even less since about 60% of the content on incels.is is just contextualising information that's already included in the main article. So, if you're referring to the first <li> of NOTMERGE, it will not apply. small jars t c 16:07, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
      • This page is not a stub per WP:SIZERULE. The second reason behind WP:NOMERGE is content related. The sources are about the website and pass WP:WEBCRIT. Systematically generalizing this website to the whole notion of incel, as the main article does, is WP:SYNTH. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 16:32, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
        I can't get the prosesize extension to work, but the point remains that forum-specific content is skeletal. I'm not sure what you mean by Systematically generalizing this website to the whole notion of incel, but 1. the main article is not about the "notion of incel," but again, about a mainly online phenomenon, and 2. most sources covering incels.is are primarily about that phenomenon, so there is no OR involved in discussing incels.is in that context. Per all the sources on the article, you can't even begin to discuss incels.is without describing incels. This is about as obviously non-SYNTH as it gets. small jars t c 17:23, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
        • The sourced content about this website meets WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV. Per what is already sourced in the article, it supports the website's content, rules, history, demographics and relevance. Per WP:RELART, both articles can exist concurrently. There is definitely WP:OR generalization in the main article since per nomination it uses sources from here, yet I do not see the website mentioned anywhere except the Incel#See also section. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:08, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
          • It's mentioned repeatedly in the incel article, just not named explicitly (per the approach taken by multiple sources that mention the site, such as the CCDH study). GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:19, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            @ GorillaWarfare (or anyone) if the result is merge, then I am assuming the site would be named in the incel article. Is that correct? S0091 ( talk) 18:24, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            That's probably a separate discussion (which I imagine could be hashed out on the article talk page rather than AfD). GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:28, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            This would certainly lead to weasel words and even more WP:OR generalization in the main article. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            Comment: I have just verified that all the sources about the website currently on this article mention the website by name. This seems to only pertain to the CCDH study mentioned above. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:48, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
            Hi IP, can you point to three that are about the site rather than it being used as an example to extrapolate information about the overall incel community? Mind you, I am the reviewer who accepted the draft and struggled with the crossover with main article. At the end of the day decided it was borderline and the community should decide so here we are. S0091 ( talk) 19:44, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
( edit conflict) To clarify, when I said above "per the approach taken by multiple sources that mention the site, such as the CCDH study" I was referring to sources used in Incel, not in Incels.is. Taking a quick look through the sources in the .is article right now, your claim is mostly accurate, with the exception of citation #8 (Scroll.in) and #17 (Salon), which are more auxiliary sources used for claims made about incels more broadly.
I'm not sure what you mean about weasel words and "OR generalization", though. Generalization is not OR, it's a part of writing encyclopedic content from a multitude of sources. WP:SYNTH would of course be inappropriate, but I don't see why that would be a certain outcome of not mentioning the site's URL. But again, this is probably something that should be sussed out after the decision is made on whether to keep this article or not, in order to avoid wasting time debating something that may become a moot point, and to avoid making this already long discussion even longer. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 19:52, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply


Media coverage:
  • [ref 1] The site is the largest incel forum, examples of posts, characteristics of site content. Talks about its administration.
  • [ref 23] Talks about the conflict between Jack Richard Peterson and the site. Talks about the nature of site content.
  • [ref 12] Article dedicated to the website. Site suspension as a result of content violations. Describes site content as "pedophilic, pro-rape" and as a successor to r/incels.
  • [ref 9] Article dedicated to a former member of the site. Characterizes the mixed forum response to that ex member leaving.
Scholarly coverage:
  • [ref 3] (Proceedings of the ACM on HCI) Explains the factors behind this site's moderation.
  • [ref 5] (Gender and Society) Overview of the website. Change in domain names. Website demographic stats. Site rules.
Note that I did not do an exhaustive source analysis but that is more than enough to justify the website's presumed notability. More sources (in this article and elsewhere like at Jack Richard Peterson or Incel) exist. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:17, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
IP, when someone asks specifically for three, only given them three and make them the best three. I am not going through all of those so out of the ones you provided, which three are the best. You can just give the footnote numbers. S0091 ( talk) 20:36, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Please keep in mind that to avoid a formal fallacy while disproving non-notability, a full source analysis is needed. But I am pretty confident of the sources I provided, you can check the first three for instance. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
1 & 5 put things in the context of the longer-term history of incels online. 23 & 9 are primarily about individual self-identified incels. As I've already said, 3 is the sort of thing the article needs, but it's not enough on its own. Refer to GW's reply to AK above for 12. Given the overlap in coverage and the need for context, I imagine the best possible article on incels.is would be almost identical to our already existing article on incel culture in general, with the addition of explicit reference to the current name of the site. By keeping we are just directing readers away from a more informative resource. small jars t c 23:58, 30 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Policy relevant to your concern can be read at WP:RELART and WP:NOMERGE. If WP:GNG is satisfied, we can keep overlapping articles. I have provided evidence of 3+ WP:RS talking about the website in depth (regardless if they also talk about incel or not). Fundamentally, those guidelines are there so that you have enough material to write an article with. In the sources I have given, there is more usable information pertaining to the site demographics, site history and style of content posted on there. Even then, this article is currently larger than stub level and stays on topic. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 00:19, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
"I imagine the best possible article on incels.is would be almost identical to our already existing article on incel culture in general". Once again, the sources do talk about the website in depth, since "no WP:OR was needed to extract their content" for the incels.is article. This is the definition at WP:WHATSIGCOV. This is why I was raising the concern of WP:OR at the original article. I would suggest to WP:GAR the incel article to solve this issue. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 00:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
Would you mind raising your OR concerns about Incel at the talk page of that article? I'm interested in learning more about what your concerns are, but don't want to derail this conversation with a tangential one. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Note: In addition to WP:NOTMERGE, WP:SIZESPLIT and WP:CONTENTSPLIT, I would suggest reading the essay at WP:OTHERCONTENT, in particular The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on whether or not the same or similar content exists or is formatted similarly in some other page; this is because there is nothing stopping anyone from editing or creating any article. All in all, the argument given to merge seems to contradict policy and precedent, especially since there is stand-alone WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV for the website. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:49, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Quick q: Are you the same editor as the IP above (130.156.160.91)? GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:10, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom and small jars. After reviewing (re-reviewing in some cases) many of the sources cited here along with the coverage in main article, Incels, I find there is only scant information covered in Incels.is that is not already comprehensively covered in the main article. Although I am not opposed to merging (or redirecting) there is not much to merge really other the than the name of the site. I also find IP 2001:48F8's arguments unconvincing and comes across as throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Ultimately, the only source that is explicitly about the site rather than the subculture or forums is Mashable which is not enough to meet GNG thus does not warrant a stand-alone article, at least at this time. S0091 ( talk) 18:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Notability is based on the existence of sourced material not on the current state of the article. Ultimately, the only source that is explicitly about the site rather than the subculture or forums is Mashable which is not enough to meet GNG thus does not warrant a stand-alone article, at least at this time. That is a falsehood for the purpose of WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV, which the reviewer can verify in my or someone other's subsequent source analysis. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Again, see WP:OTHERCONTENT.
    You cannot expect me to dig you up three sources, all to proceed with a WP:ICANTHEARYOU-type argument. In fact, I am not throwing things at you, I am referring to policy, which is what is expected in an AFD.
    In the course of this relist I have yet to see an example of policy that is violated. Meanwhile, I and others have stated reasons to keep this article from both notability/SIGCOV and size perspectives. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:51, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    The purpose of AfD is to determine if a stand-alone article is warranted which does often take digging up sources so the community can make an informed decision and I did ask for the three sources. You provided six or seven of which I considered in addition to other editor's comments about them. I happen to disagree with small jar about #3 as I think it is mostly about Reddit/online communities using a couple forums as examples and most of the relevant content is covered at Incels but they disagree about Mashable which I think is a source supporting notability, even if weak but either way the article does meet GNG.
    The only policy I think you have cited is WP:OR which you used incorrectly as GW and small jars pointed out. Most of the others are essays or information pages with some having less weight with the community than others and for some you are interpreting incorrectly. For example WP:OTHERCONTENT is an essay and one not cited often at least in AfDs because it has nothing to do with whether a stand-alone article should exist. WP:GNG, a guideline, states: This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article. This is even if an article meets GNG.
    I also want to clarify I never said you were throwing things at me, which would be at least uncivil if not a personal attack. You have committed neither but you are skewing into WP:BLUDGEONING territory so I will not comment further as it invites often unhelpful responses. The closer will assess the strength of the arguments so leaving it in their capable hands. S0091 ( talk) 20:38, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    See WP:ONLYESSAY. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 21:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    To add on, essays reflect past consensus (or else they are edited away) and are particularly useful here to avoid this discussion from becoming WP:POINTY and WP:IDONTLIKEIT about the topic at hand. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 21:06, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Also, as before, see WP:NOMERGE. Quoting directly, this article is a discrete subject and the incel article is too long, and both are notable. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 21:03, 31 May 2023 (UTC) reply
    Perhaps don't make three additional replies after a second editor raises WP:BLUDGEON concerns. Just my 2¢. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 15:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Keep: As per above reasons to have the article kept. SapphireWilliams ( talk pagecontributions) 10:08, 1 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. Sufficient sourcing demonstrated by the IP contributor. The first source they give, https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jlac.00026.jak is specifically titled "Online hatred of women in the Incels.me forum", so it's not about Incels in general, it is specifically about this forum. It is not a "primary research paper" in sense of WP:SCHOLARSHIP, that's about a paper introducing a scientific concept; this paper is very much a secondary source, as it didn't make up the Incels.me forum. With the other sources listed, these suffice for individual notability. With due credit to the nominator, who is deservedly respected as mentioned above, the Incel article is quite large (and well written!), and can stand to have a few independent related articles like this one that have standalone notability. -- GRuban ( talk) 15:27, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    If you can access more than the title, the abstract of that source states that The aim of this study is to shed light on the group dynamics of the incel community, by applying mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyse how the users of the forum create in-group identity and how they construct major out-groups, particularly women, which makes it clear that they are studying the online community in general and that the forum is just their point of access for data. small jars t c 17:51, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    That is cherrypicking. The previous paragraph (which you conveniently cut off), as well as the whole article both mention the site in detail. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 19:23, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    "Mentions the site in detail" is an oxymoron. The point that the coverage is ultimately about the online community instead of the particular forums used at the time particular sources were written seems to stand for this source. To argue for keeping, either the relevance of this point to deletion must be contested, or sufficient sources to which it does not apply must be found. I think the former argument would be more productive. Personally, it doesn’t seem useful to distinguish between the phenomenon and the place it happens in, when the notability of the place entirely derives from the phenomenon, but that intuition may well not be backed by policy. small jars t c 19:55, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    That is the core point here - there is just no real RS on "Incel.is" as a standalone topic (WP:BASIC will show that). Much of the above is trying to "bend" other RS into being about the site, when it is really about topics related to Incels, and Incels online, but not "Incel.is". Wikipedia is not the place for promotion of a site, it must be in itself notable. Aszx5000 ( talk) 20:00, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Yeah, but the number of sources like this that do include incels.is right in the title makes this a weird case. I think it's obvious that separating this site from the context that makes it matter is unhelpful, but I can't find any specific policy to affirm that. We need something like WP:1E for non-BLP topics like this. small jars t c 20:05, 2 June 2023 (UTC) thanks to the comments of some more experienced editors below, I now know where to find the thing I was looking for small jars t c 06:15, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Sources have been brought up which discuss:
    • the website's history
    • the website's content characteristics
    • the website's rules
    • the website's moderation style
    • the website's admins
    • interactions between the website and some of its prominent users (a spokesman and an ex moderator)
    • the website's popularity (it is the largest incel forum, among others like 4chan /r9k/, r/ForeverAlone, etc)
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:07, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    The first sentence of the abstract (which you left out) reads: This paper presents a study of the (now suspended) online discussion forum incels.me and its users, involuntary celibates or incels, [...] 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:03, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Where does it say "Incels.is". Aszx5000 ( talk) 20:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Relaying what another user mentioned before I found this discussion, this is covered by the essay WP:COMBINE. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:08, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    .me and .is are two successive domains used by the same community with (apparently) the same operators. To be fair, the first part of that statement is true of r/incels and the things from before that as well. small jars t c 21:56, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Comment. Can't really find any material standalone notability for this site (and not SIGCOV profile to give standalone notability); like the r\incel, should be merged into the main article (or a list of other incel sites). Aszx5000 ( talk) 19:09, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Note that there is no such requirement as "standalone" notability, see WP:RELART. AfDs are about this article, not another one.
    Consensus holds that whataboutism WP:WHATABOUT is a really bad argument in AfDs. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 19:19, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    You are misreading that. To have a Wikipedia article on a topic, it must have standalone notability. E.g. RS that proves that it is an inherently notable topic. There aren't such refs on this site. WP:RELART is about having two articles sharing a similar topic, but that issue doesn't apply (as yet) here; although perhaps a FORK is yet to come. "Incel.is" is just not (as yet) an inherently notable site. No proper RS is doing article on it as a site, no real SIGCOV. You should adhere to the acronyms you quote. Aszx5000 ( talk) 19:54, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    See the 10+ sources mentioned earlier in the discussion by me and others. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 19:59, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    None are about the site "Incel.is" as a standalone topic (WP:BASIC will show that). The above is trying to "bend" other RS into being about the site, when it is really about topics related to Incels, and Incels online, but not "Incel.is". Wikipedia is not the place for promotion of a site, it must be in itself notable. You need to find a standalone article about "Incel.is" (as a site), not the topic of Incels, or Incels on the internet, for "Incel.is" to be a Wikipedia article. Aszx5000 ( talk) 20:02, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    This is false. A source was brought up called "incels.me suspended by domain registrar". And if you ever check the others (most of which have the site in their title), they do provide significant coverage about the website. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 20:12, 2 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Redirect and merge to Incel. If there is consensus to spinout an article on incel online communities (as opposed to... subculture?) it can be retargeted, but not being a redundant content fork just means we can't A10 it, it doesn't mean we must keep every article that anyone decides to spinout for any reason. Aszx5000, if you're looking for the criteria as applied to spinout pages specifically, that would be NOPAGE and not BASIC. Alpha3031 ( tc) 07:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Thanks Alpha3031. I didn't quote NOPAGE as my understanding was that this was about the issue of whether "Incel.is" was a notable site (on its own), which I think was getting blurred into the broader topic area of Incel online communities (possibly a spin-out topic per your comments). I think your suggestion is a good one. Aszx5000 ( talk) 09:03, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Just a question: may I ask why you say WP:NOPAGE applies here? To me, the bullet points of this essay are to be contradicted by the above discussion/sources etc. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 12:36, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    To clarify, let me bring up the bullet points one by one:
    • Does incel provide additional context? No based on the WP:SIGCOV above. In fact, the articles (if you read them) generalize incels.is to incel, not the other way around.
    • Do related topics provide needed context? I would say no, since the sources (if you read them) are about the website (history, content, moderation).
    • Is this page a "permastub"? Definitely no based on the source analysis giving 10+ sources about this website.
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 12:43, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    not being a redundant content fork just means we can't A10 it, it doesn't mean we must keep every article that anyone decides to spinout for any reason Deletion discussions are based on the page (this website) meeting WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV. You are essentially arguing that this page isn't a content fork but WP:IDONTLIKEIT. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 12:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Responding to both IP comments above, the core issue is that you haven't provided enough RS that cover the site "Incel.is" as a notable topic (i.e. some level of SIGCOV). There is a correlation to the length of an AfD and the amount of RS proving the topic is notable/SIGCOV. Here is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Projectivism, complex topic, poor article, but drowning in RS specifically about the topic. In contrast, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anna Berndtson, no real RS, and the cardinal sin of all (and ironically for which there is no acronym), the Wikipedia article is the main plank of their notability. Save yourself time by just showing at least one (we need 2-3) RS that cover "Incel.is" as a topic (not wider Incels). If there aren't any, then the article will keep coming back to AfD. Aszx5000 ( talk) 13:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Here are WP:RS showing notability (and also provide material to further improve this article):
    Media coverage:
    • [ref 1] The site is the largest incel forum, examples of posts, characteristics of site content. Talks about its administration.
    • [ref 23] Talks about the conflict between Jack Richard Peterson and the site. Talks about the nature of site content.
    • [ref 12] Article dedicated to the website. Site suspension as a result of content violations. Describes site content as "pedophilic, pro-rape" and as a successor to r/incels.
    • [ref 9] Article dedicated to a former member of the site. Characterizes the mixed forum response to that ex member leaving.
    Scholarly coverage:
    • [ref 3] (Proceedings of the ACM on HCI) Explains the factors behind this site's moderation.
    • [ref 5] (Gender and Society) Overview of the website. Change in domain names. Website demographic stats. Site rules.
    Those sources provide WP:SIGCOV. They discuss:
    • the website's history
    • the website's content characteristics
    • the website's rules
    • the website's moderation style
    • the website's two admins
    • interactions between the website and some of its prominent users (a spokesman and an ex moderator)
    • the website's popularity (it is the largest incel forum, among others like 4chan /r9k/, r/ForeverAlone, etc) 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    And as always, WP:WHATABOUTISM and "AfD size comparisons" are particularly weak arguments in AfDs. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:55, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    From your list above (which is the discussion we need here):
    • [ref 1]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.co
    • [ref 23]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.me
    • [ref 12]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; more mention of Incel.me
    • [ref 9]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names
    • [ref 3]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names; not really an RS
    • [ref 5]. One passing mention of "Incel.is".
    If that is the best refs you have on the subject, then this unfortunately would not make "Incel.is" site notable for a standalone article, and it would be a delete. Are there other RS that you want to present on the subject of "Incel.is"? Aszx5000 ( talk) 14:11, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    See WP:COMBINE, in particular Recognising when two sources are on the same topic.
    More importantly, your source analysis is patently false. To show that let's take source 9, which you say has zero mention of .is. Quoting leading some incels.is members to wonder if the site - created in 2017 after Reddit [...]
    Please note that uncontestably misrepresenting sources in AfDs is viewed as WP:GAMING and is considered disruptive. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 14:20, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Sorry, you are back to the acronyms. Just show me RS that covers the "Incel.is" site at a topic (and has some level of SIGCOV), and we are done. Without that, no acronym will save this article long-term. Even if it survived this AfD, it will be back again (and again) given how weak the current RS is. Aszx5000 ( talk) 14:23, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    You are misrepresenting the sources and have shown no indication of having read them (by the lie you made above). 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 14:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Replies are mixed. Some want to keep it, some want to delete it, so I'm relisting to hopefully get better consensus on this.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Cheers! // 🌶️ Jala peño🌶️ Don't click this link! 15:02, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Comment. The issue remains that none of the RS presented are on the site "Incel.is" (they are on related topics of Incels or online Incels), and we have no - as yet - evidence that the site "Incel.is" is notable (i.e. no SIGCOV). It is an emotive topic, and there are walls of text on everything other than producing RS that show the "Incel.is" site has SIGCOV ( Personal attack removed). Lets give it another week to see if such RS can be found that has SIGCOV on the site "Incel.is". Aszx5000 ( talk) 15:42, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: Here are WP:RS showing notability (and also provide material to further improve this article):
    Media coverage:
    • [ref 1] The site is the largest incel forum, examples of posts, characteristics of site content. Talks about its administration.
    • [ref 23] Talks about the conflict between Jack Richard Peterson and the site. Talks about the nature of site content.
    • [ref 12] Article dedicated to the website. Site suspension as a result of content violations. Describes site content as "pedophilic, pro-rape" and as a successor to r/incels.
    • [ref 9] Article dedicated to a former member of the site. Characterizes the mixed forum response to that ex member leaving.
    Scholarly coverage:
    • [ref 3] (Proceedings of the ACM on HCI) Explains the factors behind this site's moderation.
    • [ref 5] (Gender and Society) Overview of the website. Change in domain names. Website demographic stats. Site rules.
    Those sources provide WP:SIGCOV since they discuss:
    • the website's history
    • the website's content characteristics
    • the website's rules
    • the website's moderation style
    • the website's two admins
    • interactions between the website and some of its prominent users (a spokesman and an ex moderator)
    • the website's popularity (it is the largest incel forum, among others like 4chan /r9k/, r/ForeverAlone, etc)
    The fact that they talk about incels.is can easily be verified:
    • by their title
    • by CTRL+Fing one of the site's names
    • by their abstract, if they are scholarly articles.
    • just by reading them
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 17:50, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: To add, WP:SIGCOV does not need to be the main topic of the source material, quoting directly from the guideline's Wikipedia page.

    Yet the poster states The issue remains that none of the RS presented are on the site "Incel.is" (they are on related topics of Incels or online Incels) which contradicts the above. The sources are about the website itself regardless (see above), so this argument misrepresents both sources and policy. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:12, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    And as already stated above:
    [ref 1]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.co
    [ref 23]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; passing mention of Incel.me
    [ref 12]. Zero mention of "Incel.is"; more mention of Incel.me
    [ref 9]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names
    [ref 3]. Zero mention of "Incel.is" or any other forum names; not really an RS
    [ref 5]. One passing mention of "Incel.is".
    Are you reading these refs? Aszx5000 ( talk) 18:21, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Your source analysis is patently false. To show that let's take source 9, which you say has zero mention of .is. Quoting directly, leading some incels.is members to wonder if the site - created in 2017 after Reddit [...]. Furthermore, the whole source itself is about the website.
    Please note that uncontestably misrepresenting sources in AfDs is viewed as WP:GAMING and is considered disruptive. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:24, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    • To add, I just saw that you are a new editor. I would encourage to take a look at the guideline WP:AFDDISCUSS. Roughly quoting, the goal of an AfD is to make a well-argued, fact-based case based upon Wikipedia policy and doing so in a civil manner.
    • You should take care to not violate all these points simultanously. In this discussion, you are telling people to stop using "acronyms" (ie. refering to policy), misrepresenting sources (saying X isn't there but in fact it is), and misrepresenting guidelines ( WP:SIGCOV). Also from the above bad faith repeating of a falsehood, you are edging on WP:GASLIGHT.
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 18:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Er ... Aszx ... the nomination and the article are both very clear that all those are different names of the site. Second sentence of the nomination, right at the top here. You're basically saying that we shouldn't use any sources about Joe Biden that happen to call him Joseph. -- GRuban ( talk) 00:54, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    They still correctly observe that all but one of the mentions to other domains are either passing or not there at all. small jars t c 01:36, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    "not there at all"
    That is a falsehood which can be verified by anyone wishing to read the sources.
    "passing"
    They were enough to fully backup this article's content (ie. WP:WHATSIGCOV). The article is larger than stub level, per the size criteria essay and the article's Start class assessment. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 01:45, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Also, please note that uncontestably misrepresenting sources in AfDs is WP:GAMING and is considered disruptive (eg. you claimed at least one source did not mention the forum yet this is patently false).
    There cannot be a discussion if a party lies about sources and the other about what's written on policy/guideline/essay pages. That is the common ground to any talk page discussion or AfD debate. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 01:51, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Trying to keep things short: can you please keep the conduct accusations, if you have to, either on their talk pages or ANI? Was debating closing as no-con myself instead of participating but probably would have regretted it either way, don't see the point of the relist though. Anyway, re NOPAGE, was mostly pointing Aszx towards it but thought it was fairly clear its intent is that you put the smaller, more specific page inside the bigger one (obviously I was wrong re clear) but specific forum -> general fits first point and retarget/online communities fits second imo Alpha3031 ( tc) 03:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: Addressing your first point, lying about factual detail in sources (is X present or not) and repeating those lies to bury the conversation when confronted with evidence is WP:GAMING. Likewise, purposeful ignoring of WP:OR practice (repeating .is =/= .me even after presented w/ WP:COMBINE) is also WP:GAMING and Wikilawyering as it argues the words of WP:OR against its intent.
    In light of how this conversation is going I would say it is pretty undue to refer to those as "conduct allegations". That is pretty much as concrete evidence as you can get.
    Now for the second part of your response, I would say a more precise essay to consider is WP:NOMERGE, as it talks about whether to merge or not to merge an article (which is the question here). I already have spoken about those points earlier. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 13:44, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Comment: To add, not pointing out that policy and sources are misrepresented would do injustice to this discussion. That's why I would say those (substantiated) conduct accusations are relevant to the discussion. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4 ( talk) 14:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC) reply
blocked sock and BLP violations
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Comment: A few years ago, Diego asked me to write a Wikipedia article on the forum he founded (this forum), I declined. He even knew I disapproved of the forum as a whole. At the time, this forum wasn't even the third most popular incel forum. I don't see any reason to give these guys ego boosts and without naming them. They are essentially just people who seek infamy, bolstered by people reposting screens from their forum for Reddit karma. I can only find 3 non-academic sources which are primarily about this forum. Nonetheless, the incel article is bloated, and there should be a way to deal with that imho 2600:4040:4032:FF00:E0C6:5D5B:9497:7FC3 ( talk) 04:30, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I do want to let people know however that there is a mini industry of people now grifting off this forum (pro and against). It's not large, but they have motives to keep this site topical that are financial/career/status related, rather than encyclopedic related. So to cast that aside, I think it would make more sense for established Wikipedia veterans to peruse the sources rather than IPs. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:E0C6:5D5B:9497:7FC3 ( talk) 05:00, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Keep it has strong sources. Brettyboy93 ( talk) 05:33, 5 June 2023 (UTC)Brettyboy93 ( talkcontribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. reply
Also a note that 'brettyboy' was one of incels.is' most active posters source, so it seems there are trolls involved in regging names. A reminder that this forum has no real issue with infamy, the owner keeps around negative articles saved about his forum, and brags about any negative media attention he receives as "winning", even at the seeming cost to his reputation and to the few innocent people seeking dating help getting wrapped up in their cult. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:B0CC:8503:D57C:8761 ( talk) 05:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
xD dude Brettyboy93 ( talk) 05:44, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Am abstaining from any sort of vote, but kindly suggest this be moved to a new article called r/incels (with ==incels.me== section), as this forum is just that with Xenforo, and there are a lot of sources on r/incels. Gorilla wants it all deleted, I think this article could be expanded, but no one so far has shown any interest to in this AFD 2600:4040:4032:FF00:B0CC:8503:D57C:8761 ( talk) 05:49, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I just remembered, BBC made a doc which was half about this forum, explicitly named it as "incels.is" and everything. It aired on BBC1 and BBC3. It's called "Inside the Secret World of Incels". Obviously Wikipedia can't quote the IMDB page but I think watching and summarizing a BBC doc is reliable? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10733470/ Also, added a bit from Talia Lavin's book which has a chapter explicitly naming and dealing with the site, prolly cuz incel wiki called her a nazi 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F031:DC14:89B8:B33D ( talk) 09:16, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Back to propositions, as it stands the Jack Richard Peterson page is about the same size as the .is page currently. I encourage wikipedia users to evaluate every article about incels currently on Wikipedia, as cramming it all into a 40 page incel article makes no sense unless incel were to be trimmed down. Also having the Jack page but not a r/incels/incels.is page would be a weird look. Imho either both should go or stay, or be renamed, but having a Jack page but not an incels.is page was really weird for almost 3-4 years. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F083:716F:5016:452B ( talk) 09:32, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Delete or merge per the arguments made in nom and by small jars - the opening line of Incel is "An incel is a member of an online subculture [...]" (emphasis mine). We don't need to have a complete article on every website that serves a subculture - not to mention that the founders of the site say it thrives off of all the publicity it can get, because it advances their movement. That the article exists (likely made at the site owner's request) is a flagrant WP:SOAP violation. That the site is insufficiently notable (a position I agree with) has also been thoroughly discussed above. Also, a comment: this discussion has been thoroughly bludgeoned. Nearly half the text here is from what is transparently a single person, the self-admitted creator of the article from two different IPs, engaging in repeated gaming and personal attacks. PriusGod ( talk) 09:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Yea for the record I didn't create the article but the New Jersey IP did. Nor am I an incels.me/is/co founder/operator/mod etc. Might make a Youtube video about this whole topic if ppl insinuate that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:4040:4032:ff00:f083:716f:5016:452b ( talkcontribs)

Diego had personally reached out to many people to whitewash and/or bolster his status years ago. I declined. Some people like Parallel Networks (an NGO created by former head of NYPD intelligence) accepted. At this point I don't think the presence of a Wikipedia article effects much one way or the other because everything is already out there now, in multiple newspapers of record. I do however share your skepticism that someone at least with status motives created the article, as users with odd editing histories like Trade and Kevinsanc were begging for this article in public wikipedia talk pages elsewhere. And the forum owner lamarcus seems to be amping up on advertizing for the forum again, on every level. Delete comments have some reasoning, but what do the "merge" votes mean? There used to be a section on incels.is in teh incel article, but Gorilla purposefully scattered that around in the article while retaining the gist of the sentences. In other words, she purposefully broke up anything concrete about the forum as an independent topic. And for reasons other than sock drama. What is the point of trusting someone with a merge who was previously hostile to a section in the article? If people want a merge, they should be explicit about what they want merged and how 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F083:716F:5016:452B ( talk) 09:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Yes, I was speaking about the other IP who wrote an entire extra article in this AfD discussion - presumably if Diego reached out to you, he'd reach out to others and eventually someone would do it. Merge, to me, means that there would be a subsection in the incel article that discusses the actual online communities that serve the subculture, that may potentially mention incels.is by name, but not necessarily. PriusGod ( talk) 16:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Eh, I don't think that incels.is' desire for infamy extends to being known for starting a 'suicide encouragement' forum in those words, which are the words 128.6.36.79, the incels.is article creator wrote. That extends into possible criminal liability for .is/SS owners or former owners. Think they just want to be known for misogyny and racism, which they've really never flinched from, even after the Epik hack and associated further articles 2600:4040:4032:FF00:71DF:80E:AA83:9535 ( talk) 23:21, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
There isn't much way for me to rationalize .is behaviour. Some gangs want to be known for horrible things they do, other times they don't, who knows why. But I don't think 128.6.36.79 showed any bad behaviour or association with .is forum. The most is they may be associated with the grifting industry surrounding .is, which is why it makes sense for veteran Wikipedia users to familiarize themselves with the source material rather than random IP users. Previously, veterans didn't even want to read the source material, hence where we are now, so I'm sure there's some veteran out there who cares about this topic 2600:4040:4032:FF00:D27:8655:D0F7:3185 ( talk) 23:45, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Anyway if this is deleted (ppl went on almost indiscriminate incel page deletion spree since 2014), should probably have a canned response ready for when peope come asking with the obvious question of why .is isn't considered notable. I wasn't the one to create the article, but certainly won't be the last to suggest its weird there's pages about incels.is spokespeople but not incels.is itself. True crime fandom people are obsessed with elevating this garbage dump forum, so would make sense to think it through instead of lazy reflexes and 30 paragraphs every 2 years. This topic has already been discussed like 3 times before over 5 years with no conclusion that could 'carry over' as it were because it was just a bunch of split second armchair opinions. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:F083:716F:5016:452B ( talk) 11:20, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Gorilla already published the names twice in incel, and there was already a BLP discussion on this which came out with consensus to keep and include names in various articles 2600:4040:4032:FF00:D27:8655:D0F7:3185 ( talk) 23:55, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
blocked sock
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
First off, those IPs don't show that
back to topic, there isn't going to be any great, new material in the (near) future, as it seems existing sources were exhausted. The only exception being academic articles. the question is if it deserves its own article or how to merge to the incel article if merge wins, given it was already broken up in the article 2600:4040:4032:FF00:D27:8655:D0F7:3185 ( talk) 00:02, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Comment: You are currently blocked by Bbb for Block evasion. See [1]. I agreed with you on what you said before though. To bring this conversation on track it would be useful for an uninvolved user to:
This would solve the issue of everything being buried in the conversation and help close the AfD. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 00:31, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply

::::No one wanted to read the sources for 5 years so why would people wanna do that now? All the votes against you are barely citing sources for a reason. Maybe you can drill down on that reason, I don't know what it is. Also I don't know why you, and the previous IP want a milquetoast article per your and their edits. This topic is about a forum which actively encourages crime and mass murder, and in public. So having a TV guide type milquetoast article is dumb. It should either go all out and match the negativity of the sources or not exist. There isn't room for a more positive article because no sources are positive. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:9900:F2CF:B698:BE28 ( talk) 06:34, 6 June 2023 (UTC) (blocked sock) reply

  • Delete or merge per GorillaWarfare and small jars, and per both WP:MERGEREASON #2 and especially #4. DFlhb ( talk) 03:51, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Can you explain why WP:NOMERGE would not apply here? The incel article warrants a split based on its size alone WP:SIZERULE. And both articles are discrete topics (subculture, website) with each meeting GNG. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:42, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Comment Quite a lot of changes are now being made to the page. I haven't looked through the new version of the article yet, but that would be worthwhile in case it dredges up anything relevant to notability. My vote remains the same on the assumption that previous, quite, um, dedicated, keep voters would have already brought up any game-changing sources. small jars t c 07:08, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Updated article is more or less the incel overlap + Talia Lavin + note that Toby Young's Spectator article is deleted, and also presents .is as an independent topic. WP:MERGEREASON is predicated on, amonng other things, whether incel is too lengthy. If voters want more sources they'd have to dig out any one of the (many) academic articles which explicitly name or are on .me/.co/.is. I 'aint doin that work, nor do I know how Wikipedia treats academic sources. Altho not a vote, keeps are 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:D480:5FD5:9310:3BA4, OwenBlacker, SapphireWilliams, and GRuban. If they wanna dig out sources they can. I don't like academia or what was the first version of the article 3BA4 wanted. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:3892:69F2:6957:EBDE ( talk) 07:19, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Regardless if there are new sources brought up, those edits should be reverted since they were made by the above IP range, which was by Bbb23 for block evasion (also see Special:Contributions/2600:4040:4032:FF00:3892:69F2:6957:EBDE/45 for this range's prior disruption on the incel and Sanctioned Suicide articles). Also, all of his comments here should be stricked out per WP:SOCKSTRIKE. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:38, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
To add, I do not know the policy in detail but I believe some of his edits can be kept since he is a good faith contributor. Though from a quick look at it they seem to not uphold WP:MOS. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 15:16, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
IP, you have hatted PriusGod and Brettyboy93's !votes under "blocked sock and BLP violations". I'm not keeping up with the situation you're describing with the blocked IP range, so I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it seems like a mistake because I don't see anything particularly off about their !votes. small jars t c 16:24, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
It was sandwiched in unsourced WP:ASPERSIONS. I tried adding more hats but I couldn't get it right on my phone. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 16:37, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
The range Special:Contributions/2600:4040:4032:FF00:3892:69F2:6957:EBDE/45 was already hatted by User:Freedom4U back in March in the Sanctioned Suicide and incel talk pages for block evasion. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 16:41, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Reinstating my hatted !vote as it did not appear to have been removed from discussion for a legitimate reason 16:27, 6 June 2023 (UTC) Delete or merge per the arguments made in nom and by small jars - the opening line of Incel is "An incel is a member of an online subculture [...]" (emphasis mine). We don't need to have a complete article on every website that serves a subculture - not to mention that the founders of the site say it thrives off of all the publicity it can get, because it advances their movement. That the article exists (likely made at the site owner's request) is a flagrant WP:SOAP violation. That the site is insufficiently notable (a position I agree with) has also been thoroughly discussed above. Also, a comment: this discussion has been thoroughly bludgeoned. ( Personal attack removed) PriusGod ( talk) 09:38, 5 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    First, by saying X person is Y other person without log-based evidence, you are casting WP:ASPERSIONS. Second, you are misrepresenting WP:SOAP, since it deals with poorly sourced, puffery articles. The article is neither unsourced nor POV: in fact I heard here that it passed an AfC review, it was not just created out of nowhere.
    Even the page WP:AFD says Accusations of vanity and other motives should be avoided and is not itself a reason for deletion. You are derailing this conversation from one about notability to one about ad hominems on the Keep !voters. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 16:55, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    That the site is insufficiently notable (a position I agree with) has also been thoroughly discussed above
    You made your all your post to this AfD about ad hominems except this one WP:ITSNOTNOTABLE sentence. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 17:03, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Currently replying on talk to avoid a tangent forming. PriusGod ( talk) 17:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC) reply

*I change my vote to delete, B342 or whoever is gunning for a 'moderate' article instead of one which matches the negativity and content of the sources, and Wikpedia community is not interested in the sources enough required to keep it an independent article. Any valuable material can be merged, but its mostly overlap. 2600:4040:4032:FF00:61E7:D218:28EF:991F ( talk) 17:57, 6 June 2023 (UTC) (blocked sock) reply


Comment: To bring this conversation back on topic, I wanted to ask the question why do the merge !voters here think a merge is necessary in spite of the length concerns brought up by User:OwenBlacker, User:GRuban and I. I have seen the points of WP:OVERLAP and WP:CONTEXT from WP:MERGEREASON brought up by User:DFlhb but I am not convinced by them. To explain:

  • Overlap cites "topics with the same name" (like Greenland island and country) or things like "flammable" and "non-flammable" as the chief examples. Here we have a website and a subculture (think bodybuilding and bodybuilding.com) so I believe the topics are not close enough to fall in that criteria. They are completely different things conceptually, a website and a subculture. The main article covers the concept which people identify as, popular use of the term, terrorist attacks (a good 75% of which predate the forum), and websites or gathering spaces like 4chan, Discord, subreddits and this. This article covers this website's history, rules, moderation, studies dedicated to it, interactions with three notable members (two of which have their own articles on Wikipedia). This is just too much extra stuff to cover in the already-large incel article. Theses and journal articles have been written about the site: having at least some of the info about this site disappear (and be less clearly navigable in the main article) would penalize the researchers in this subject area (or whoever else might require encyclopedic content about the incel subculture).
  • Context: if a short article requires the background material or context from a broader article in order to understand it. It then cites the example of a minor book character. If the "Background" section were to be removed, then article would still be well readable, since it is ultimately talks about a website and most of the info are this website's rules, suspensions from domains, rhetoric, which does not require any particular context to write about.

That is why I think there is no true WP:MERGEREASON. In turn, the criteria for WP:NOMERGE read:

Merging should be avoided if

  • The resulting article would be too long or clunky
  • The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles, or
  • The topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, with each meeting GNG, even if short

For point 1, I believe there is consensus for that, since multiple users excluding me have brought this up and the nominator is currently improving the main article to address that. For point 2, the sources brought up during this AfD give many avenues to expand upon (the two admins, the site's content, rules, history). The coverage isn't just one-off. Multiple journal articles were dedicated to the website, as stated in their abstracts (which is also pretty good evidence for notability, especially for a simple website). For point 3, the consensus on GNG was first acknowledged by the relister even before I came here. They wrote in their relist comment: For further input... since it's unclear if the article should be kept or merged. Aside from me and other non-established contributors (here), User:GRuban has appraised the sources as meeting GNG, and there hasn't really been a strong challenge to that (aside of WP:NOTNOTABLE assertions in the heat of the debate). The discussion focuses mostly on the need to merge, which I am trying to settle here. And finally for discrete subjects this article is even more discrete than the other as it talks simply about a website and not a subculture which spans all over the internet, has had violence attributed to it, has entered common vocabulary and the definition of which is pretty complex, at the very least beyond just being a single website created in 2018. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 04:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Other points to consider:
  • WP:WHENSPLIT suggests a split when one section is too large.
  • In his own article Jack Richard Peterson is only notable for being a user and spokesperson for the incels.is site.
2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 04:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
TL;DR
The main article incel has WP:COATRACK tendencies and merging incels.is to it amounts to adding another coat. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 05:27, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Comment: New source released June 6th, which is about the site and mentions the site by name: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448231176777. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:10, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

An omen that this AfD has been going on way too long. small jars t c 06:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Looking at the thing: IDK, the name of the site seems to be absent from the title and abstract, but appears as their source of data. Seems to be the standard model. small jars t c 06:16, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
They say "of a popular website" in the abstract but name it thoroughly in the rest of the study and the figures. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
The passage [...] produced by users of incels.is. We refer to this group specifically when we use the term “incel” throughout our analyses and discussion. is particularly relevant. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:26, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
"Analyses and discussion" does not include the abstract, so it can't be inferred that that's what they were talking about from the start. I think you would need the abstract to indicate that the article is, at least in part, directly concerned with the site for sigcov. (Unless the bits after the weird grey line are also the abstract?? I'm assuming that's just the introduction missing a heading) small jars t c 06:38, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Off topic, but they managed to misspell it as "incel.is" twice! Papers need edit buttons. small jars t c 06:41, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
A paragraph taken from near the conclusion:
Indeed, users on incels.is have already circulated a plan to address their potential deplatforming, while incels and other manosphere groups use deplatforming and censorship as “proof” that left-wing and feminist groups are targeting men by restricting free speech (Marwick and Lewis, 2017). As our results suggest that most men that contribute to incels.is arrive as misogynists, specific responses are necessary to disrupt such misogyny.
A sample of the article's data section:
The vast majority of participants on incels.is use misogynistic terms. We find that 81.2% of participants used at least one misogynistic term during the study period (see Table 1).
Other sentence talking about an offshoot of this site:
For instance, the incels.is wiki references many academic papers to advance misogynistic arguments.
Looking at it, there is SIGCOV, even with the technicality that the abstract says "a popular website". 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 06:47, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Though the paper usually treats incels.is as more of a databank than an interesting subject in itself, you are right that it does touch on some more direct observations on the site. It's worth seeing what these claims are themselves cited to in order to search for more in-depth sources. Doing this with the last quote you gave, for example: it turns out to be sourced directly to https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill, which does not seem promising to me, but you might get better results from doing the same to some of their other claims. small jars t c 11:23, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
This paper is already a secondary source. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 13:32, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Yes, but my point is that the things you bring up are not in-depth enough. They are brief summaries of things other sources said. I'm just suggesting checking those other sources in case they are RS that talk about those things in more detail. small jars t c 13:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
In-depth just means you are able to write an article about it without OR. The article may even be short since this is a discrete subject. That's clearly the case here, even with this only one source. It is not a "gotcha" term or an arbitrary moving goalpost. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:44, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Also, you might want to read WP:100W. There is much more than 100 words of coverage, even in this article alone. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 14:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Also, once again, this paper is a secondary source and coverage is measured by secondary sources, not "sources of secondary sources". If you find a newspaper article, you are not expected to "cite the source of the journalist instead". This is absurd and defeats the purpose of secondary sources. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 15:09, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not trying to debate what's counted as sigcov for the purpose of this article, as this has been done more than extensively above. Just trying to suggest a way that stronger material might be found. small jars t c 15:36, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I think this belongs better in the Talk page then, since you say the presence of SIGCOV is already settled. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 15:41, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Delete or merge per smalljars. Nythar ( 💬- 🍀) 10:05, 7 June 2023 (UTC) Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Nythar ( talkcontribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. reply
    This is becoming extremely disruptive, 2001:48f8:3004:fc4. On what basis do you think Nythar has been canvassed? You can't just go around tagging users as canvassed when they !vote against your preferred outcome. From what I can see, Nythar is an active editor who routinely contributes to deletion discussions, and if this is based on your absurd claim below that SmallJarsWithGreenLabels was canvassing when they merely mentioned this discussion at Talk:Incel, Nythar has never contributed to that article nor its talk page, so even if that was the case, there's really no basis to think they were aware of that discussion or watchlisting the page. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 18:41, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    I had this concern based on the del. reason being WP:PERX (where X is precisely the canvasser) and this !vote having occurred right after the canvassing done at Talk:Incels. Also, the contribution history indicates this user has "awoken" to post here (nevermind that I only read the first digit). So thats why I had this concern, genuinely.
    Anyways, WP:NOTAVOTE makes this a moot issue.
    To avoid this conversation from spiralling away again, I would like to redirect it towards WP:AFDDISCUSS. There are still unanswered questions directed to nom and merge voters about WP:COATRACK of incel and WP:NOTMERGE of incels.is. Also the sources already presented (and quoted) are pretty damning in giving standalone notability to the site. Yet there does not seem to be a complete response to that from merge voters, just picking apart some details. See above. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Also, you are still calling the canvas notice "absurd", yet it fits three of the four sufficient conditions of WP:INAPPNOTE (biased, audience, transparency). 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:53, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    To add about the "transparency" bit which I hadn't discussed much earlier. The canvassing guidelines state:
    Soliciting support other than by posting direct messages, such as using a custom signature with a message promoting a specific position on any issue being discussed. is characteristic of inappropriate notification. Here, the canvassing message was crafted within a talk post. It made sure to:
    • use tone to discredit IP editors in general, and levy incomplete conduct accusations (bludgeoning is rampant on both !voting sides here).
    • encourage a merge vote
    • link the AfD
    2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:59, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    I don't see how you can think this was canvassing, unless you really believe I conspired with GW to make an edit to incel that she would have plausible reason to revert, so that I would then be obliged to post a topic in line with BRD that would conveniently lead me to mention the arguments made in this AfD, which would frankly be insane when there are much easier ways people routinely get away with canvassing. small jars t c 22:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    Canvassing is just linking to an AfD while presenting a biased point of view on a possible decision outcome in a biased location (which you have done), that's it. Tagging canvassing is not an accusation of bad faith, it is just part of the XfD (and wider discussion) etiquette. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 22:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    From the second paragraph: Canvassing is notification done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way, so yes it is an accusation of bad faith. small jars t c 23:17, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    I reasonably say you had the intention to influence this discussion, based on what I presented above. I am just trying not to be rude.
    Also, I'm not accusing of anything beyond that, namely WP:POINT talk page posting: you and GorillaWarfare are just putting words in my mouth. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 23:28, 8 June 2023 (UTC) reply
  • Comment: This discussion (delete vote) has been cavassed at Talk:Incel. (diff: [2]). Also, I should point there is obviously WP:DUCK off-site canvassing for some keep !votes too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:48f8:3004:fc4:48ea:35ce:a536:b342 ( talk) 17:12, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
    • Please look more closely at behavioral guidelines before accusing editors of going against them. The scattershot accusations you've been making are really starting to test the bounds of WP:CIVIL. Simply mentioning the existence of another discussion is not canvassing. Even if SmallJarsWithGreenLabels had posted an explicit invitation at Talk:Incel for people to come to this discussion it would probably not be canvassing, per WP:APPNOTE ("An editor who may wish to draw a wider range of informed, but uninvolved, editors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following: ... The talk page of one or more directly related articles.") GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 17:18, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
      The passage that is considered canvassing is:
      If you can chew through the BLUD from some keep-voting IPs, I think that there is a general consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Incels.is that the topic of this article is a culture and not "incels" as such, as stated in arguments made by myself user:PriusGod that incels.is belongs within the scope of this article, which have been affirmed by a few other contributors. Separately, I cannot find any direct verification of the definition given in the lede in the sources it is cited to.
      The expression "IP BLUD" is clearly biased (also clearly discriminates against logged out or new editors). The assertion "incels.is belongs within the scope of this article" quite clearly encourages a merge vote. Furthermore, it addressed to an audience that is in support of deleting this article (the nominator of this discussion). See this excerpt in WP:CANVAS:
      The audience must not be selected on the basis of their opinions—for example, if notices are sent to editors who previously supported deleting an article 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 17:25, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
        • You're suggesting that smalljars canvassed me, the person who nominated the article for deletion and has already expressed my opinion in this deletion discussion? Come on, let's be serious. GorillaWarfare (she/her •  talk) 17:29, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
          It clearly violates the "Campaigning" section WP:INAPPNOTE. Also, it violates the "Partisan" section since it is addressed to an involved audience. It was not a friendly notice in form nor in content. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 17:34, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
        First of all, I'm just going to call the accusation of CANVAS ridiculous and ignore it. To the second part of the complaint: I am strongly opposed to discrimination against IPs (which you can verify if you really want by reading my votes on the latest community wishlist). I've struck the previous wording at talk:incel and am sorry if my comment came across as insinuating of anything. My description was meant to be based concretely on the fact that all of the worst bludgeoning happens to have come from keep voting IPs so far. small jars t c 19:00, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply
        as stated in arguments made by myself user:PriusGod that incels.is belongs within the scope of this article, which have been affirmed by a few other contributors
        You are pushing to merge. The question here is merge versus no merge. That's obvious campaigning. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 19:07, 7 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Comment: To help close the debate, here is a detailed source assessment for this site only. I have quoted specific passages that show standalone WP:SIGCOV. (update: I have rewritten the article with those new sources and removed extra material not about the site. The old version had unclear source names like ":3". Also the new sources now link clearly the founders and the different site URLs together).


Source assessment table:
Source Independent? Reliable? Significant coverage? Count source toward GNG?
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit Yes Yes per WP:VOX. Yes Site mentioned 14 times. Key passage about site: This kind of mass killer praise — referring to Lépine as a “saint” in one’s username — is part of the culture of incels.co. Yet in the immediate wake of another mass killing, advocacy for violence isn’t treated as a serious concern by the forum’s administrator. Yes
https://mashable.com/article/incels-me-domain-suspended-by-registry Yes Yes per WP:MASHABLE (non-sponsored article, obviously) Yes Source about site suspension. Key passage: On Tuesday, the .ME registry, which controls the entire .ME domain database, published a post explaining that they -- and not a domain registrar like GoDaddy -- had suspended the domain. The registry says the domain was suspended over anti-abuse policy infractions based on the promotion of acts of violence and hate speech on the website. Incels.me has been inaccessible since Oct. 15. [...] The domain registry says it was monitoring incels.me since May after being notified about the website’s possible connection to a domestic terror attack. Yes
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sympathy-for-the-incel Yes ? WP:DAILYBEAST. No consensus. Yes This particular site's ' rules and culture (does not allow femcels, which are part of the incel community). Key passage about site: On the incels.me forum, a stated list of rules for participation include guidelines that are stricter than most elite private clubs in America. No women allowed. No exception. Yes, this means that a forum dedicated to decrying success with women has as one of its primary rules a focus on enforced isolation. Other rules also brutally shut out any chance to provide advice or mentorship to other young men. A few months ago, when Peterson was using the forum, he suddenly found that he was banned from having certain privileges in the chatrooms. Even the incels, it seemed, were rejecting him. ? Unknown
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448231176777 Yes Yes Peer-reviewed article in a high-impact journal ( New Media & Society). Yes Whole article about this site (url mentioned 39 times). Key passages about site:
  • Furthermore, we find that there is no statistically significant overall association between a user’s post frequency and their use of misogynistic terms, which suggests most users posting on incels.is do not become misogynistic on incels.is but arrive already endorsing misogyny.
  • The vast majority of participants on incels.is use misogynistic terms. We find that 81.2% of participants used at least one misogynistic term during the study period (see Table 1). In contrast, 67.7% of participants used neutral terms for women (e.g. “women”), meaning that some users exclusively refer to women using misogynistic terms.
  • For instance, the incels.is wiki references many academic papers to advance misogynistic arguments. While appearing scientific, incels frequently cite single studies, ignore counter claims, or cherry pick examples, such as citing a study produced by Vagisil to body shame women (Incels.wiki, 2022c).
Yes
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3476057 Yes Yes Peer-reviewed article in a reputed journal (see Journal of the ACM) Yes About migration from r/incels to this site. Key passages talking precisely about this site:
  • one of the subreddits’ former core members, seargentincel, mentions that he had already discussed moving the community outside of Reddit with moderators. According to him, when the subreddit was banned, he created the standalone website incels.co, and former r/Incels members quickly organized the migration in Discord channels.
  • Our analysis suggests that community-level moderation measures significantly hamper activity and growth in the communities we study. For both communities, there was a substantial decrease in the number of newcomers, active users, and posts after the moderation measure. Yet, this tells only part of the story: we also find an increase in the relative activity for both communities: per user, substantially more daily posts occurred on the fringe websites (referring to both thedonald.win and incels.is)
Yes
https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-culture-warlords-talia-lavin-hachette-books-163023083.html Yes Yes WP:RS/P indicates Engadget as reliable. Yes Investigative journalism book with website as one of the subjects. Key passage about the particular site: Incels.co has the feeling of a barroom boast-off. The vibe is giddy but competitive—users intoxicated by the freedom of a space where they are free to express prejudice with as much violence as they wish. There’s a sense of one-upmanship that pervades the place, a desire to heighten the level of extremity of speech, graphic images rendered, racism expressed. It’s also a forum for the encouragement of despair. As in every incel space, the dual forces of despair and rage fight for space, but on this particular board, the atmosphere is heightened. One post was created by a user whose avatar was the face of Scott Beierle, the man who had shot two women and himself to death at a Tallahassee yoga studio. (talks about the difference between site and other incel communities) Yes
http://blog.nameshield.com/blog/2019/01/10/the-shutting-down-of-incels-me-the-involuntary-single-website Yes Yes Corporate blog of a cybersecurity company Yes Whole article is about this site's domain suspension as a result of terrorism connections (same topic as Mashable source) Yes
https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2022.2129014 Yes Yes Peer-reviewed article in Terrorism and Political Violence Yes Paper's subject is incels.is. Mentions useful details about site itself, like linking the .co, .me, .is domains together:

An alternative to Reddit was created, incels.me. Incels.me was then suspended in 2018 due to violating the .me registry's anti-abuse policy and its successot, incels.co was refused renewal of their domain name. The most recent iteration of the site--which is essentially copied from other domains--is incels.is and it has successfully maintaoned much of its membership from previous sites. Incels.is' rules limit participation to those who identify as Incels or those who have swallowed the Black pill, meaning they may not identify as an Incel but ascribe to the ideology and are indistinguishable from other members.. It also talks about the site's discussion tags: [...] The third option, "rope," refers to giving up, either by ceasing all attempts at self-improvement and LDAR (lay down and rot) or through suicide. These strategies are common enough that they have their own separate discussion tags on incels.is.

Yes
Supreme Gentlemen or Radicalized Killers: Analyzing the Radicalization Paths of Involuntary Celibate Killers and the Role of Online Incel Forums (Percich, 2021) Yes No declared conflict of interest in the thesis. ? Low-citation Masters thesis ( WP:SCHOLARSHIP). Though any conclusions made here are unreliable, I believe it is a reliable secondary source for basic info about this site. ? Contains info about particular rules on the site: incels.co has recently tightened its new user account account approvals as an individual now has to log in via their home WIFI (usage of public WIFI disqualifies you), asks whether the user is female or male, and to explain their situation. ? Unknown
http://rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/incel-civil-war-girlfriend-komesarj-1234724278 Yes Yes This article is filed in the "culture" section of Rolling Stone. Yet, WP:RS/P#Rolling Stone (culture) says there is consensus that Rolling Stone (culture) is reliable, albeit requiring attribution. Yes Article about an ex-moderator "Komesarj" departing due to having found a girlfriend and resulting backlash. Key passage:

On Tuesday, in a thread on the forum Incels.is that has since been deleted (it remains available through the Internet Archive), a moderator who goes by the name "Komesarj" announced his departure from the group. He explained that he has already taken several months off from the site to focus on self-improvement. [...] Yet many of the first responses were positive, congratulating Komesarj on "ascending." Soon enough, however, other incels were pestering him for more details, accusing him of "braghing" or rubbing his success in their faces, calling him a fake incel, and speculating that he'd made the whole story up.

Yes
This table may not be a final or consensus view; it may summarize developing consensus, or reflect assessments of a single editor. Created using {{ source assess table}}.

2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 01:02, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply

To reiterate my "keep" argument more concisely:
I think that saying: all sources about incels.is are actually about incel is as absurd as saying that all sources about patriots.win are actually about the alt-right. Not all alt-righters are members of that site, and not all of incels are members of incels.is. Yet both are currently the biggest sites dedicated to the alt-right and incels respectively. And both are predominantly online subcultures.
Currently, r/The_Donald's article (older, more notable name for patriots.win) is cross-linked at Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign. This means that precedent is in favor of keeping the site's standalone article, especially when it has SIGCOV and presumed notability (see my source assessment table).
In general, such merges are harmful to Wikipedia as it encourages turning related topics into one big WP:COATRACK article. The current incel article has only one passing mention of this site and is a coatrack of incel shootings, online incel communities, and the everyday incel term/insult. Reading it, I don't even know what "incel" means anymore (in fact this is currently a debate on its talk page). Merging this page too to the main article would make the article even more unclear to readers. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 01:34, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
You somehow missed that your engadget source is in fact an excerpt from Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, which is not as much about incel.co as it is about extremist chatrooms in general, of which incels.co seems to have been the one example that happened to be excerpted by engadget among a multitude given in the book. small jars t c 02:51, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Per WP:SIGCOV,
Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material
Your point contradicts the notability guideline. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 03:01, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
I doubt your evaluation of the sources based on your inability even to accurately identify what they are or who they come from. small jars t c 03:58, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
You are just nitpicking a technicality in 1 out of 6 sources I brought forward to disprove(?) all the sources. It isn't even relevant. The book can be cited instead and this Engadget article then shows the book is a WP:RS. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 04:10, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply

Comment: I have rewritten the article using the sources brought up during the AfD, adding extra coverage about incels.is and removing superfluous content not about this website. Of note: the new Zimmerman source explicitly links all the urls together. Aside from that, I have also WP:COMBINED other relevant info from the new sources. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 21:35, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply

I also found a new report here:
https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/spitting-out-the-blackpill-evaluating-how-incels-present-themselves-in-their-own-words-on-the-incel-wiki/
talking about the incels.is wiki and incels.is by name. I have incorporated it the main article, along that of the related Gizmodo page. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 22:52, 9 June 2023 (UTC) reply
Comment: I have improved the article significantly to ~900 words readable prose only using sources which refer to "incels.is" or obvious synonyms like "incels.co" or "Lamarcus Small's incel forum". I think this should be enough to spin it off, since it is now 4 times bigger than the previous version. 2001:48F8:3004:FC4:48EA:35CE:A536:B342 ( talk) 02:04, 10 June 2023 (UTC) reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.

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