I refactored the comments below from the main AFD page as they were weighing it down. Stifle 21:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Just completed a second refactoring. Stifle 16:18, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
First, I will break down the reason for each delete and prove it's invalidity.
Alexa rankings are not a part of the notability guidelines for web sites for several reasons:
Criteria for web content Web specific-content is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:
The article itself must provide proofs that its subject meets one of these criteria via inlined links or a "Reference" or "External link" section.
AfD etiquette
Everything in bold has been ignored when it concerns this AfD-- Dave 19:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
There are no objective criteria for notability besides the Alexa and Google tests. "Non-notable" is generally a non- NPOV designation. The person who authored the article clearly believes that the topic is notable enough to be included.
The no original research rule keeps out most of what is unencyclopedic. Notability is not needed as long as the verifiability rules are strictly applied.
The recent fundraising page says, "Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." We are not doing that if we are deleting articles solely due to their obscurity. "Detailed obscure topics hurt no-one because it's pretty hard to find them by accident, and Wikipedia isn't paper" (from Wikipedia:Importance).
Wikipedia is not paper and (practically) has no size limits, and so should include "everything" that fits within its other criteria. There is room for articles on any and every verifiable subject. There is no harm in including an obscure topic, because if it is truly non-notable, people simply won't search for it or link to it. It will not create a significant server load as such.
A policy of "delete if and only if the article is not verifiable in a reliable source" would make it far easier to decide borderline cases and would turn AfD into a more constructive process, which would make articles Wikipedia more reliable by adding references where possible. The problem with writing "Delete, non-notable" is not about whether the articles should be in Wikipedia, but that it is a quick phrase that does not tell another person why the article is non-notable.-- Dave 14:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
no•ta•bil•i•ty 1. The state or quality of being eminent or worthy of notice.
Take notice of the word quality. Notability is not something that can be measured by numbers or rankings. It's very subjective. Just because you, the Wikipedia editor, haven't heard of EaC, does that mean it's not notable? Several EaC members have posted in this AfD as to why they feel EaC is notable. Yes, I know that new users posting here are frowned upon by many of you (even though it's perfectly within Wikipedia's guidelines for them to do so), but read what they are writing. Is it truly in bad faith? They are all making very valid points as to the notability of EaC. So, since the subjectivity of notability cannot be argued, how is the Wikipedia community to make such decisions based on notability? Well, they will need some guidelines to adhere to. Otherwise it's just chaos and people can just use lack of notability as an excuse to delete whatever they want. How am I or others to know that the people coming to a consensus on these issues aren't just power hungry delete freaks, who take pleasure in tearing something down as opposed to building it up? This is why Wikipedia needs some kind of guidelines to go by. Wikipedia's guidelines say that although you can use an Alexa test, it is unreliable and therefore, not used to determine notability. So, Wikipedia provides guidelines to help the consensus determine notability. Again, the guidelines are as follows:
Criteria for web content Web specific-content is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:
The article itself must provide proofs that its subject meets one of these criteria via inlined links or a "Reference" or "External link" section.
When I brought this to the community's attention the first time, people pointed out that the site award was not notable. Fine. Also, the yahoo article just provides a link to EaC under their "New and Notable" section. (Notable? hhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....) But the one article that does qualify EaC as notable according to Wikipedia's notability guidelines is the Sydney Morning Herald. This is a reliable published work (newspaper). This newspaper did not merely report the internet address, but included a paragraph about it, and provided an opinion on the content of the site. One more recently added link is to a document originally published by Stanford University and currently published by Stuttgart University that uses EaC as an example for it's Text mining and Information Retrieval methods. (If Stanford University and Stuttgart University aren't credible sources, I don't know what is!) I've provided the links in an external links section for proof as suggested by the guidelines. Therefore the article falls within Wikipedia's notability guidelines for websites.. If you choose to ignore these guidelines as they are at the time of this AfD, then what is the point of even having guidelines at all?
The next thing I want to comment on is the absolute unbendability of some of the Wikipedians participating in this discussion. It's as if they've already decided that this article should be deleted and refuse to listen to reason. What's the point of having an AfD discussion if people are just going to vote based on their own personal bias. One example is Isotope recently posted "...but since I'm not changing my mind and you are going to continue to fight to keep a reference to your site on Wikipedia, this is pretty much a wasted conversation, so let's just leave it at that." Shouldn't Wikipedians have open enough minds so that those minds could be changed, if a different point of view made sense to them at some point in the discussion? Another example is when I made some points that favored not deleting, instead of admitting that the article falls within the guidelines, Mitsukai says "...you are finding the flaws in the rules that will likely be tightened up after this AFD regardless of the outcome. For that we should thank you, but that does not make your site any more notable" Statements like these make me feel like I'm wasting my time, because no matter what I say, no matter how valid my points may be, it truly seems like several people here will ignore the facts and push for deletion due to their own personal bias. and to me, that is a shame. That kind of railroading adds a rotten stink to the Wikipedia community as a whole.
I also want to point out the complete unfairness of this whole thing. The fact is there are several other articles that are similar (in the fact that they are about lesser known film-oriented websites) and they continue to exist on Wikipedia uncontested, while this article is being severely scrutinized. It's a shame that you folks are ignoring WP:BITE. I'm a newcomer that could add value to Wikipedia, but this whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I do understand the need to delete and edit articles and deal with trolls and sockpuppets, but you folks are taking this too far. Give a newbie the benefit of the doubt, try to work with him to improve his contributions instead of railroading and blackballing him.
There are probably a dozen more things I could point out in these final comments in support of this article and why the behavior of some of the Wikipedians participating in this AfD is far from exemplary, but most of them have been made at one point or another in this AfD.
Also, regarding Stifle moving a huge chunk of this AfD to the discussion page: He suggests reading it, I insist upon it if you are part of the consensus, because it was truly a part of this discussion.
I will sum up these final comments with the following: On a Wikipedia page regarding the administrators decision to delete it states the following:
Deciding whether to delete
I would particularly like to bring to attention the final guideline on this list (It's bold on the original page, I didn't bold it myself.)
Alot has been said here. You can discount everything I've stated (although you shouldn't) as well as the other newbies that have chimed in in the article's favor (shouldn't discount them either). There are still 2 Wikipedian's who have voted in favor of keeping this article. That alone should create some doubt as to the reasons for deleting. It is not cut and dry, it is not unanimous.
When in doubt, don't delete.-- Dave 16:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I refactored the comments below from the main AFD page as they were weighing it down. Stifle 21:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Just completed a second refactoring. Stifle 16:18, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
First, I will break down the reason for each delete and prove it's invalidity.
Alexa rankings are not a part of the notability guidelines for web sites for several reasons:
Criteria for web content Web specific-content is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:
The article itself must provide proofs that its subject meets one of these criteria via inlined links or a "Reference" or "External link" section.
AfD etiquette
Everything in bold has been ignored when it concerns this AfD-- Dave 19:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
There are no objective criteria for notability besides the Alexa and Google tests. "Non-notable" is generally a non- NPOV designation. The person who authored the article clearly believes that the topic is notable enough to be included.
The no original research rule keeps out most of what is unencyclopedic. Notability is not needed as long as the verifiability rules are strictly applied.
The recent fundraising page says, "Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." We are not doing that if we are deleting articles solely due to their obscurity. "Detailed obscure topics hurt no-one because it's pretty hard to find them by accident, and Wikipedia isn't paper" (from Wikipedia:Importance).
Wikipedia is not paper and (practically) has no size limits, and so should include "everything" that fits within its other criteria. There is room for articles on any and every verifiable subject. There is no harm in including an obscure topic, because if it is truly non-notable, people simply won't search for it or link to it. It will not create a significant server load as such.
A policy of "delete if and only if the article is not verifiable in a reliable source" would make it far easier to decide borderline cases and would turn AfD into a more constructive process, which would make articles Wikipedia more reliable by adding references where possible. The problem with writing "Delete, non-notable" is not about whether the articles should be in Wikipedia, but that it is a quick phrase that does not tell another person why the article is non-notable.-- Dave 14:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
no•ta•bil•i•ty 1. The state or quality of being eminent or worthy of notice.
Take notice of the word quality. Notability is not something that can be measured by numbers or rankings. It's very subjective. Just because you, the Wikipedia editor, haven't heard of EaC, does that mean it's not notable? Several EaC members have posted in this AfD as to why they feel EaC is notable. Yes, I know that new users posting here are frowned upon by many of you (even though it's perfectly within Wikipedia's guidelines for them to do so), but read what they are writing. Is it truly in bad faith? They are all making very valid points as to the notability of EaC. So, since the subjectivity of notability cannot be argued, how is the Wikipedia community to make such decisions based on notability? Well, they will need some guidelines to adhere to. Otherwise it's just chaos and people can just use lack of notability as an excuse to delete whatever they want. How am I or others to know that the people coming to a consensus on these issues aren't just power hungry delete freaks, who take pleasure in tearing something down as opposed to building it up? This is why Wikipedia needs some kind of guidelines to go by. Wikipedia's guidelines say that although you can use an Alexa test, it is unreliable and therefore, not used to determine notability. So, Wikipedia provides guidelines to help the consensus determine notability. Again, the guidelines are as follows:
Criteria for web content Web specific-content is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:
The article itself must provide proofs that its subject meets one of these criteria via inlined links or a "Reference" or "External link" section.
When I brought this to the community's attention the first time, people pointed out that the site award was not notable. Fine. Also, the yahoo article just provides a link to EaC under their "New and Notable" section. (Notable? hhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....) But the one article that does qualify EaC as notable according to Wikipedia's notability guidelines is the Sydney Morning Herald. This is a reliable published work (newspaper). This newspaper did not merely report the internet address, but included a paragraph about it, and provided an opinion on the content of the site. One more recently added link is to a document originally published by Stanford University and currently published by Stuttgart University that uses EaC as an example for it's Text mining and Information Retrieval methods. (If Stanford University and Stuttgart University aren't credible sources, I don't know what is!) I've provided the links in an external links section for proof as suggested by the guidelines. Therefore the article falls within Wikipedia's notability guidelines for websites.. If you choose to ignore these guidelines as they are at the time of this AfD, then what is the point of even having guidelines at all?
The next thing I want to comment on is the absolute unbendability of some of the Wikipedians participating in this discussion. It's as if they've already decided that this article should be deleted and refuse to listen to reason. What's the point of having an AfD discussion if people are just going to vote based on their own personal bias. One example is Isotope recently posted "...but since I'm not changing my mind and you are going to continue to fight to keep a reference to your site on Wikipedia, this is pretty much a wasted conversation, so let's just leave it at that." Shouldn't Wikipedians have open enough minds so that those minds could be changed, if a different point of view made sense to them at some point in the discussion? Another example is when I made some points that favored not deleting, instead of admitting that the article falls within the guidelines, Mitsukai says "...you are finding the flaws in the rules that will likely be tightened up after this AFD regardless of the outcome. For that we should thank you, but that does not make your site any more notable" Statements like these make me feel like I'm wasting my time, because no matter what I say, no matter how valid my points may be, it truly seems like several people here will ignore the facts and push for deletion due to their own personal bias. and to me, that is a shame. That kind of railroading adds a rotten stink to the Wikipedia community as a whole.
I also want to point out the complete unfairness of this whole thing. The fact is there are several other articles that are similar (in the fact that they are about lesser known film-oriented websites) and they continue to exist on Wikipedia uncontested, while this article is being severely scrutinized. It's a shame that you folks are ignoring WP:BITE. I'm a newcomer that could add value to Wikipedia, but this whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I do understand the need to delete and edit articles and deal with trolls and sockpuppets, but you folks are taking this too far. Give a newbie the benefit of the doubt, try to work with him to improve his contributions instead of railroading and blackballing him.
There are probably a dozen more things I could point out in these final comments in support of this article and why the behavior of some of the Wikipedians participating in this AfD is far from exemplary, but most of them have been made at one point or another in this AfD.
Also, regarding Stifle moving a huge chunk of this AfD to the discussion page: He suggests reading it, I insist upon it if you are part of the consensus, because it was truly a part of this discussion.
I will sum up these final comments with the following: On a Wikipedia page regarding the administrators decision to delete it states the following:
Deciding whether to delete
I would particularly like to bring to attention the final guideline on this list (It's bold on the original page, I didn't bold it myself.)
Alot has been said here. You can discount everything I've stated (although you shouldn't) as well as the other newbies that have chimed in in the article's favor (shouldn't discount them either). There are still 2 Wikipedian's who have voted in favor of keeping this article. That alone should create some doubt as to the reasons for deleting. It is not cut and dry, it is not unanimous.
When in doubt, don't delete.-- Dave 16:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)