Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Resort (talker)

Resort (talker)

Resort (talker) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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DELETE. Subject fails general notability guidelines, there is a lack of non-trivial coverage from reliable third party publications. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 06:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:11, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep - Resort, as I amended the article with additional links and details to illustrate more clearly, holds an important place in the history of early internet culture. Resort, and its own popularity, predates the popularity of the web. Resort is a direct predecessor of modern social networks, instant messaging, and MMORPGs. It's been in operation for over fifteen years, has been used by tens of thousands of people, and is widely considered the most popular talker of its kind of all time. Fox (talk) 05:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC) — Afoxson (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • I get the impression this is part of a larger WP:WALLEDGARDEN. While I thank you for any amendments you may have made to the article, there still are no reliable sources covering this subject to speak of. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 05:09, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
    • At the very minimum, BBC and the referenced book are reliable sources. Notability should be interpreted relative to the context of the subject matter. You're dealing with an internet-based topic whose heyday predated the popularity of the web. Therefore, while reliable sources are certainly referenced, it's unlikely that a plethora of coverage exists. There may be additional coverage to be found, but that means more research should occur, it doesn't mean the article should be deleted. Further, this is not a walled garden. While Foothills, Surfers, and Resort all started with roughly the same code base, they all had different user bases, different staff, different cultures, different focuses and features, and all evolved in their own separate ways. Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ all have categories for Talkers, in which Resort is at the very top of every list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afoxson (talk • contribs) 05:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
      • The problem is that Wikipedia is not intended to be a publisher of original research or thought, and the BBC reference only mentions the subject in passing (one sentence) thus does not meet the bar of non-trivial coverage. I will leave this up to the closing administrator to decide but ideally we need more. Lots more. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 06:17, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
        • The primary purpose of the BBC article is to cover Talkers, of which the article explicitly identifies the Resort as the most popular of. The Resort is not a passing reference, it, along with its contemporaries, are the entire point of the article. That article was created by an independent third party and was peer reviewed as per their editorial standards. Fox (talk) 02:17, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. There is a reasonable claim to notability, however the article currently doesn't have reliable sourcing. In regards to the BBC article - this is part of the h2g2 project (described here), which is not a reliable source. From what I can see of the Internet Games Directory it is only a simple listing, which cannot be called significant coverage. If there is better sourcing than this then I would be more than happy for the article to be kept, but at the moment I just don't see it. Quantpole (talk) 11:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
  • The BBC is a reliable source as it's a well-known news organization whose h2g2 project has well established and accepted editorial guidelines (at the link referenced above, see 'Contributing'), including peer review of contributions. The Internet Games Directory book definitely has more detail on this topic, it's just that that Google book search is only exposing the link. Fox (talk) 02:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
• Delete - lacks significant coverage in reliable sources. Robofish (talk) 00:41, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
  • I think we need to take a step back here. Wikipedia itself strongly cautions against militaristically applying guidelines. After all, guidelines are not laws, and were intended to be interpreted with common sense and within the context of the subject matter. This is one of the reasons behind the multiple subject specific guidelines for notability. This particular subject is nearly two decades old and predates the popularity of the web. How much historic reporting can one reasonably expect on a topic whose popularity preceeded most news organization's existence on the web? Of that, how much of it can one reasonably expect not to be a sea of 404s? How much current reporting can one reasonably expect on a dated, yet important, technology of yester-yester-decade, from news organizations that have a proclivity for focusing on the topics of today? This topic is obviously notable enough to merit its own article. It's existed for nearly two decades, is still in operation, and has touched the lives of literally tens of thousands of people from across the world. If that's not notable, I don't know what is. Countless friendships have been made, marriages have been formed, all as a result of people meeting on Resort. It's clearly a topic "worthy of notice" and a topic that has been "noticed" to a significant degree by the world at large. Look past the letter and more toward the spirit of the notability guidelines. Wikipedia's "golden rule" is "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.". How can Wikipedia's best interest be served and how is Wikipedia possibly being improved by deleting an article that not only represents an integral part of early internet culture, that is neither fleeting nor insignificant, but also has touched so many people, globally? Fox (talk) 03:07, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research are firm policies, not guidelines. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 04:51, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

• Delete I doubt the claims being made, and there are no valid sources to back them up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

Resort is widely regarded as one of the most, if not the most, popular talker of all time [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] and has been visited by tens of thousands of people from across the world since its inception.

• How can it be the most popular of all time, if its visiters are numbered in the tens of thousands? There are older programs that have millions of users. And shouldn't Cnet or some other such site have mentioned it at some time in their long history? Dream Focus 11:51, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
  • It's only claimed that it's the most popular Talker, amongst other Talkers, which is supported by the multiple references in the article. Remember that Talkers are an older text-only technology, popular in the mid 90s, well before the internet had tens of millions of users. Tens of thousands of users at that time was a lot of people :) And it has been referenced by other sites, for example, the BBC. Fox (talk) 13:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
    • That is misleading/untrue. It has not been "referenced" by the BBC, it has been referenced by the BBC h2g2 project, which is a UK-based Wiki, much like Wikipedia. JBsupreme (talk) ✄ ✄ ✄ 05:59, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
      • This is DEFINITELY NOT misleading/untrue. The h2g2 project is an official project of the BCC [1]. The h2g2 project is administered by BBC employees [2]. The h2g2 project is not "much like Wikipedia"; It's contributors need to be registered [3] and its contributions require multiple levels of peer review [4] [5]. Wikipedia's own article, the one that you yourself reference, on h2g2, clearly states that h2g2 "has been run by the BBC since 2001," "It is often compared to Wikipedia but there are differences between the sites," "Following at least seven days' reviewing, Entries in Peer Review may be recommended by a volunteer Scout and accepted by the in-house team. When this happens, a copy of the Entry is passed to a volunteer Sub-editor for fact checking and general tidying, followed by a brief check by the in-house team" and "Articles written by Researchers form the 'Guide' as a whole, with an 'Edited Guide' being steadily created out of factual articles that have been peer reviewed via the aptly-named 'Peer Review'". The h2g2 article in question clearly appears [6] within the peer-reviewed Edited Guide. Fox (talk) 16:24, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep per Afoxson/Fox above. The type of sources used here are not published books by academics or articles in the NYT, but the subject matter is fairly arcane and isolated to the online world - one has to weigh that in, the sources are appropriate for the topic. Green Cardamom (talk) 15:27, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
• See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foothills (talker) (essentially the same issues and type of article and sources and should be looked at as a whole). Green Cardamom (talk) 15:34, 20 March 2010 (UTC)