Talk:Whedonesque.com

SPEEDY DELETION - Why it is unwarranted

This article recently was nominated for Speedy Deletion, which to me is a bit of a confounding notion - not because I started the article, but because of the supposed reason for Speedy Delete was "|A7" in nature, basically that it "does not indicate why its subject is important or significant", to which I would have to reply: "Have you read the article at all?" Saying it's so horribly un-established that it is worth not only deleting, but speedy deleting, is ridiculous - this obviously should have been on AFD, not Speedy, though I sincerely believe it would have survived that too.

Here's the CURRENT, up-to-date evidence for why it should stay, all quoted from the current content of the article:

• "Whedonesque.com (also referred to as Whedonesque and spelled in the site's logo as of 2006 as WHEDONesque) is a collaborative weblog devoted to the works and everything related to the works of Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. The site is most famous for the fact that Whedon himself blogs on the site, and uses it as one of his main means of communication with fans, on topics ranging from releases of or related to his works, to the canonical or non-canonical nature of certain related works (such as comic books), to any number of other things. Whedon first admitted to reading the blog in late 2004[1]. Posts on Whedonesque.com are frequently quoted, referenced or cited in discussions and articles about Whedon and his works[2][3]."

- Note the following from the above:

1.) Joss Whedon (who is plenty notable, mind) uses it as "one of" (actually, pretty much THE, though this isn't as well-established as such in the article) the main ways he makes announcements to fans and addresses rumors and canonical issues on his various series - the latter of which alone is apparently notable enough for its own seperate Wikipedia article. He's extremely well-known for the close contact he keeps with his fans, and it's mostly done through this very site that the article is about.

2.)The site really is cited a lot, though I'll admit that outside the fandom (or academia, which is more obscure as far as Google is concerned) what it's usually cited for is being a good website/blog/whatever, more than as an actual information source; still, this makes it pretty notable. And, WikiProject Firefly and the Buffyverse WikiProject both use it as a frequent source for pretty much any Joss Whedon-related article, which means there's some sort of consensus that it's worthy of using as such. Google it, and look past the first page of results (the first page is mostly stuff directly Whedonesque-connected, such as a Flickr page, the reviews and media mentions don't really start being there until the second page because Whedonesque apparently spills over into every web ap website ever, except maybe for Facebook) you'll see what I mean about this assertion in the article being fairly accurate.

Further support for independent notability: coverage of its recognition from Entertainment Weekly (direct link to EW coverage here), and there's also a minor mention in a columnist's piece in USA Today.

• "Whedonesque posters, responding to Whedon's posts on the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike, initiated acts of support for the writers which quickly grew into a multi-fandom movement dubbed Fans4writers."

- Note that members actually helped found Fans4Writers, which is considered a relatively notable organization participating in the '07/'08 WGA strike action, enough to retain its own WP article no less and having gotten a bit of media attention on its own (Google it, you'll see what I mean).

It also won a couple of fairly notable awards - nothing crazy impressive, but from notable sources:

   * SciFi.com's Site of the Week, awarded to Whedonesque.com on November 22, 2004.
   * The Times Online's Blog of the Week, awarded to Whedonesque on March 4, 2006.

Also of course the above-noted Entertainment Weekly recognition, where it was labeled one of the "Top 25 Essential Fansites", in part because of Whedon's direct involvement (and lack of his own "official" site) and his tendency to announce some pretty major developments on there. This isn't mentioned in the article for some reason, but it's pretty notable I would think since EW's a crazy-notable publication itself.

I'm pretty sure that this stuff is enough to establish at least some level of notability, so I'm frankly stunned that it's on Speedy of all things. Seriously, are people just resorting to that without thinking lately, or what? Impatient or something? Or are people forgetting AFD exists??

Five minutes' Googling or five minutes' reading the article should be enough to establish the fact that, though it is stub class, it's clearly something that if contested at all, should be brought up on AFD - there's enough evidence for even a casual observer who is willing to click a couple of internal links that it's not a clear-cut enough "lack of notability establishment" case for Speedy Delete to be justified. I want to Assume Good Faith, but damn! Whoever nominated this for Speedy is making it real hard to do just that.

By all means, bring this up on AFD if you feel it might not be notable enough for WP - I'm willing to bow to consensus somewhat, if it's considered "notable, just not quite notable enough for its own separate article at this time" - but it's a pretty damn noteworthy, popular, award-winning site, so putting it on Speedy is bizarre at best. It's not Joe Schmoe's Buffy Blog we're talking about here. This is something that needs discussion, which the Speedy Delete process pretty much cuts out entirely.

Please, use AFD more often, people. It saves a lot of headaches and prevents this kind of weirdness and lack of discussion! Runa27 (talk) 00:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Old post

Um, "This article lacks information on the importance of its subject'"? WHAT?

No offense, but did the person who tagged it as such bother to follow all the Wikilinks AND read it? Are they foreign and therefore possibly less familiar with Whedon's work? Do they completely not understand why Joss Whedon is a fairly important current figure in science fiction and fantasy film, TV and comics? Or is the person (I really don't mean to go into ad-hominem, here, and I apologize if it comes off as such, it just implies to me that the person...) who tagged it as such really think Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (one of the biggest and most influential cult hits of the past decade, as well as one of the most critically-acclaimed series of the last decade), as well as creator and/or writer of several best-selling comic books (Fray, Serenity: Those Left Behind, and as well as one of the most recent X-Men series, for starters) for both Dark Horse Comics and Marvel Comics, someone whose biggest perceived failure (Firefly, canceled after 11 episodes on Fox network) managed to both on initial release and after a reairing of the series several years later, hit the Amazon.com top ten sales for DVDs for weeks or months in a row (I'm pretty sure it was actually a couple of months or more, for the top ten), managed to be considered worth it to release to iTunes Music Store as a "Classic" series, AND managed, due in part to the DVD sales, to snag a minor feature film release (Serenity)...

...isn't important enough to have his central, extraordinarily frequently-cited even here on Wikipedia means of direct online communication with his fan community (which he is well known for having strong ties to and frequent interaction with), including going so far as to make the majority of his most important announcements and statements of canonical status of certain releases there, considered to be important enough to have a brief article?

Additionally, other staff, including many of the writers, of his projects ranging from Buffy/Angel to Firefly also use the site to post important updates and the like.

The site is also (partly due to how well it's respected by Buffy/Angel and Firefly fans) cited by an almost head-spinningly large number of articles (there's 48 that pop up in the search here for "whedonesque"; you can check this by typing it into the search box and pressing "search" instead of "go") relating to his works on this very encyclopedia, five random selections of which I directly cited (see: the article's first paragraph) to show how often and wide-rangingly it's cited and referenced. But hey, if you must know, here's the first page's worth of results under that search term (and yeah, I've checked; all or most include at least one or more references to postings on the site):

Spike (film) Relevance: 15.8% - 9.3 kB (1406 words) - 19:16, 3 June 2006

Go Ask Malice: A Slayer's Diary Relevance: 11.1% - 5.1 kB (768 words) - 01:01, 22 May 2006

After Image (Buffy novel) Relevance: 11.0% - 2.5 kB (351 words) - 22:49, 25 May 2006

Brian Lynch Relevance: 11.0% - 2.4 kB (332 words) - 23:17, 22 May 2006

Bad Bargain (Buffy novel) Relevance: 11.0% - 3.2 kB (462 words) - 13:11, 6 June 2006

Carnival of Souls (Buffy novel) Relevance: 9.4% - 2.9 kB (413 words) - 16:39, 25 May 2006

Portal Through Time (Buffy novel) Relevance: 9.4% - 3.6 kB (509 words) - 23:34, 21 May 2006

Blackout (Buffy novel) Relevance: 9.0% - 4.6 kB (692 words) - 00:52, 22 May 2006

Dingoes Ate My Baby Relevance: 7.8% - 4.7 kB (688 words) - 01:23, 12 June 2006

Spike: Old Times (Angel comic) Relevance: 7.8% - 4.1 kB (634 words) - 13:55, 15 May 2006

History of the Slayer Relevance: 7.8% - 4.8 kB (718 words) - 12:23, 28 May 2006

Ripper (television) Relevance: 6.3% - 3.6 kB (519 words) - 08:42, 8 June 2006

Lydia (Buffyverse) Relevance: 6.3% - 6.0 kB (849 words) - 01:33, 27 April 2006

Spike: Asylum (Angel comic) Relevance: 6.3% - 6.2 kB (944 words) - 13:42, 6 June 2006

Old Friends (Angel comic) Relevance: 5.4% - 4.6 kB (693 words) - 16:22, 21 May 2006

Wicked Willow (Buffy novel) Relevance: 5.1% - 8.7 kB (1270 words) - 12:35, 22 May 2006

Buffyverse canonical issues Relevance: 4.7% - 0.0 kB (3 words) - 10:13, 8 June 2006

Unaired Buffy pilot Relevance: 4.7% - 12.2 kB (1965 words) - 23:28, 10 June 2006

Buffy the Animated Series Relevance: 4.7% - 10.5 kB (1602 words) - 01:21, 23 May 2006

Faith Lehane Relevance: 3.9% - 16.5 kB (2584 words) - 00:00, 12 June 2006

I don't mean to be snippy, and I apologize if I'm coming off as such. However, I fail to see how it's somehow coming off as an "unimportant" website, all things considered...

Considering how many times and on how many Buffy and Firefly-related articles it's cited, does it not make sense for it to have its own article?

Of course there isn't much info in the article right now. That's because I do not know the complete history of the site, and was not able to access the complete members' list for it. That's why it's a stub.

So, all that said, I would like to try and Assume Good Faith.

So would whomever stuck that label on the page please respond on this Talk page so I can know why the hell it's not obvious that, while hardly the most important site ever, it's still a notable enough website to have a brief article here? I'd appreciate it. Thanks. Runa27 23:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

• The article originally seemed like an advert or spam. This tag was placed without any suggestion that it should be deleted, but rather in the hope that the wording might be improved to focus on why this meets WP:WEB. Obviously as the author you beleive this has been satisfactorily met, and so I have no qualms with the tag being removed. Harro5 07:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Btw, please put external references to mentions of the site rather than links to other Wikipedia articles. While our site is definitely notable, it isn't really credible to say something is widely quoted and giving examples of work under the same banner. Thanks. Harro5 07:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow! Thank you so much for the quick response! Advert, huh? Well, since I'm not aware of any serious controversies surrounding the site (though there might be some relating to its semi-exclusivity), I can sort of see how it would come across as such, in a way. :P Between that and not being aware of some of the site's history, well, it seemed right to mark it a stub, and I probably will not be the one to remove the stub tag(s), either, even though I will try to contribue a little more to the general information here. I'm searching now to see how I can fill out the article with better information, and I will probably stick it up for peer review in a bit to see what other people make of it. For now at least, I'm going to remove the "importance" tag, since you said you'd "have no qualms" with that and all (though I will tweak the article a little in the hopes of making its importance to Whedon's fandom slightly clearer), but if it gets put up again by somebody else, I probably won't remove it, because if two people tag it like that, well, something's obviously wrong with the prose I wrote then, even if it makes sense to me. :P

I will also try to seek out non-Wikipedia sites that cite or quote Whedonesque, since you're right in that it would be a serious improvement. :) The little linked notations in the article itself were there mainly because after having been to the site (where I discovered some announcements that had yet to be made elsewhere regarding new "definitely canon" Buffy and Firefly comic series) after seeing it linked so many times from so many Buffy/Angel and Firefly articles, and realizing it didn't have its own article I thought "That needs to be there, even if it's a stub." But again, I'll try to find some non-Wikipedia sites that note it. :) Thanks for the advice!Runa27 19:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)