Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ArticleAlley


 * 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   no consensus. Cirt (talk) 20:11, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

ArticleAlley

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Website where people post articles. No evidence of notability. &mdash; RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 09:53, 27 August 2009 (UTC) "'The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself. This criterion includes reliable published works in all forms, such as newspaper and magazine articles, books, television documentaries, websites, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations.'"The Google Books citations, of which there are several, cite ArticleAlley.Com as a source. Each of these books were published by independent sources. 34pin6 (talk) 21:42, 27 August 2009 (UTC)  Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NW ( Talk ) 03:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. The article does give evidence of notability under WP:WEB, where it states
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Keep - Tend to agree with 34pin6. It's probably borderline, but okay. -- AlanI (talk • contribs) 03:40, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Eliminate the Alexa rank and the other one, as well as company website, and you have the Google Books.  On there, it seems to have a good number of resources that mention them, but they don't seem to be the subject of multiple non-trivial published works that I can tell.  I could be wrong, but a cursory examination of the (albeit indirect) sources seems to lead me to this conclusion. -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 04:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * rebuttal. I think you're splitting hairs here. The fact that the site has been noted so often, bespeaks of its noteworthiness and, by extension, its notability. See this statement by User:Uncle G, where this admin says that, "'The rationale that underpins the primary notability criterion is that the fact that something has been noted demonstrates that it is notable.'" from user:Uncle G, posted by 34pin6 (talk) 16:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I could very well be splitting hairs and not knowing I'm doing so. =) I'm pretty much using a straight interp of the notability guidelines here. In any event, I've poked User:Uncle G on the subject and am hoping for his note.  It's this that will potentially change my mind.  -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 19:24, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Dennisthe2's point is that there's a difference between a book that simply points to a page on a WWW site when discussing some other subject, as (say) ISBN 9780470222799 page 219 does, and a book that actually talks about this subject. Here's another thing that I should probably write up one day: A Google search result is not a source citation.  What you have in the article is a Google search result, from which the article is drawing an original conclusion made firsthand by a Wikipedia editor, moreover.  There's is not, actually, a citation of a specific book anywhere in the article at hand as it currently stands. If you go back to my page that you pointed to and read from the top, you'll find non-triviality discussed.  What is needed for notability is sources that are actually about the subject, that document it in depth.  (In Notability, you'll find this concept expressed as "significant coverage".)  The aforecited book isn't about the subject, for example.  It doesn't say one single thing about this subject at all.  There's not one single fact on that page, about this subject, that can be taken and added to this article.  If you want to change Dennisthe2's mind &mdash; and xe is a reasonable editor whose mind can be changed &mdash; show that multiple published works, independent of the subject and from people with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy, document this subject in depth.  It's that last part that you aren't addressing.  A published work that simply mentions this subject in passing, or that doesn't even give any facts about this subject at all, is not contributing to documenting the subject in depth.  Find some sources that do, cite them, and you'll make a case that can potentially change Dennisthe2's mind. Uncle G (talk) 23:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. No evidence whatsoever of any significant coverage by anything remotely WP:RS that I can find. Please see Search engine test for why Alexa, Google Books and other rankings are irrelevant for this discussion. Flowanda | Talk 07:31, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A few references that (might?) be used to make a rebuttal of Flowanda's/Uncle G's notability challenge
 * Washington Post mention of articlealley.com
 * Philly.Com, blog commenter cites articlealley.com
 * Business Exchange, subsidiary of BusinessWeek, lists an Article Alley article in its "Other useful pages, Web sites and tools" reference section
 * Will these help my case? 34pin6 (talk) 15:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I also have another question, albeit a slight digression. But its answer would help me to understand a bit more the notability issue. In my mind, there is no substantive difference between ArticlesBase website and ArticleAlley. They are the same type of site, both have lots of mentions. The only difference I can see, is that articles base has more Google News mentions than ArticleAlley. However, both are widely known and highly trafficked. It seems to me a bit myopic to only view WP:RS as the chief criteria for notability, in this particular case. It also seems to me that, lots of people - authors, bloggers, journalists - citing ArticleAlley, has to count for something - regardless of whether one can find tons of reliable sources, in the strict, Wikipedia sense of the word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 34pin6 (talk • contribs) 15:12, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, these won't work. The WA Post link refers to a bad search result, the second one is a comment in an article about AIG, and the third one is a link to something on ArticleAlley.  All of these have links to it, but a link to it is not the subject of it.  This comes back to mention versus subject - in no case presented are these articles actually about ArticleAlley, they only point to articles stored on it.  To put it forthright, we need articles about ArticleAlley as a subject, and we have been presented with nothing of the sort, and in summary, if it only mentions it, it's not an article about it. If you can find articles (yes, please, note the plural here) about ArticleAlley (not merely mentioning, but actually discussing in detail), then we will have a winner.  Conversely, if you can't turn up anything, then we will need to delete.  Please, please, PLEASE review the notability guidelines. -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 20:25, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Two more notes. One, please see also WP:OSE - yes, there's ArticlesBase, but it appears to have other resources backing this, aside from just mentions.  If I'm wrong, then it, too, comes up here to AFD.  Two, WP:RS may seem myopic, but we have these standards in place for varying reasons.  Granted, we have WP:IAR, but we also have WP:WIARM as an explanation to it.  This is one of these things that we can't ignore the rules for. -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 22:20, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, this is a tough one. I just got through scouring all my Internet marketing, SEO and Web design books, for ArticleAlley citations. Found a couple, but still trivial. Also scoured Library Cat, News Cat, Google Scholar, and Google News archives. I did find these news mentions:
 * News mentions of ArticleAlley, 2006-2008. The last one I translated from Hebrew to English; it mentions ArticleAlley as one of the best article marketing directories - as do many of the others - but still the citations do not constitute "significant coverage" in Dennis The Tiger's sense. ugh!
 * How would I fare with a merge to the article marketing article? 34pin6 (talk) 01:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Addendum. Look at these particular references to ArticleAlley in Google Books:
 * 1) http://books.google.com/books?id=PXTx1q2AvR0C&pg=PA216&dq=articlealley&ei=SYChSs9IqejKBJSwnOIO#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false is a reference directly to AA
 * 2) http://books.google.com/books?id=yq3_hokFYoUC&pg=PA277&dq=articlealley&ei=SYChSs9IqejKBJSwnOIO#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false
 * 3) http://books.google.com/books?id=nWMeatE2fpQC&pg=PA105&dq=articlealley&ei=SYChSs9IqejKBJSwnOIO#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false Refers to AA with examples of articles rather than the article itself
 * 4) http://books.google.com/books?id=qnxnHkq2FkAC&pg=PA241&dq=articlealley&lr=&ei=pIGhSvzIN5iQyQSggeWJCA#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false Refers to AA directly
 * 5) http://books.google.com/books?id=HmUli0em_McC&pg=PT183&dq=articlealley&lr=&ei=pIGhSvzIN5iQyQSggeWJCA#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false AA direct reference
 * 6) http://books.google.com/books?id=1_HE9Woh9AcC&pg=PA69&dq=articlealley&lr=&ei=pIGhSvzIN5iQyQSggeWJCA#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false
 * 7) http://books.google.com/books?id=4D6O-85x9zwC&pg=PT123&dq=articlealley&lr=&ei=pIGhSvzIN5iQyQSggeWJCA#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false
 * 8) http://books.google.com/books?id=yX3nTY3Syp4C&pg=PA64&dq=articlealley&lr=&ei=FoKhSp7uGpKgygTg-L36Bw#v=onepage&q=articlealley&f=false
 * 9) http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2006/nov/8.html


 * Now, while I agree that most of these are what you would call trivial mentions. However, Example 2 includes a screenshot of an ArticleAlley web page, in a chapter about article marketing. I'm sure that at least a few of these books goes into some detail on how to submit articles to ArticleAlley, as well as other sites.
 * So, it seems to me that - taken as a whole - these citations, descriptions and this screenshot prove that ArticleAlley is considered somewhat of an authority in the arena of article marketing - regardless of whether each individual mention is "trivial".

34pin6 (talk) 21:13, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Checked them all. Still no dice.  In most of them, you have a note to look at ArticleAlley - anything from a direct statement to go there all the way to the web address for AA.  The screenshots in there unfortunately don't help - those are for point of illustration.  In a nutshell - and Dream Focus, pay attention here - these are still not books about ArticleAlley, they merely mention or point to them.  We still need something discussing ArticleAlley.  Also, pay attention to WP:WEB.  -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 19:16, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If these books consider it a legitimate reference for information, that makes it clearly notable. Do you think various unrelated books would mention it otherwise?  Plus you have news sources as well.   D r e a m Focus  01:54, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Dream, the news mentions don't meet notability because they are only news mentions. WP:N does not account for news mentions, it accounts for news subjects, and this is not something that appears to be the general subject of a news article - only a mention.  There is a significant difference between subject and mention, thus the emphasis that I'm inserting.  Unrelated books merely mentioning it don't enter into the picture for this purpose - I've already covered that part.  The problem remains that there's nothing really about the site in particular as per WP:WEB, so for all intents and purposes, yes, I do, indeed, not only think, but ardently declare with no personal doubt that various unrelated books would mention it, and such a mention would still not make it notable as per the Wikipedia notability guidelines.  You are welcome to discuss these guidelines at the talk page for the guideline.  -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 21:54, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Those guidelines were never passed in a general vote, nor by a reasonable number of people. They were slipped in without many people noticing, and defended by those who use them as an excuse to mass delete articles they don't like.  The question of AFD is whether you believe something is notable, and meet the policies, not whether you believe they meet the guidelines, since a guideline is nothing more than a suggestion, not a law.   D r e a m Focus  08:12, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Every guideline Wikipedia is there for reason. There are some of them I don't like either but I still see the reason for them. The notability guidelines are there in part to preserve people's privacy. They're also there to keep Wikipedia an encyclopedia. Finally, they are there to keep up the general quality of the articles; people generally are unwilling to collaborate to improve an article about something they've never heard of, and they can't improve it if there is no reliable information on the subject.--RDBury (talk) 19:37, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Dream, there was no vote because we're not a democracy. -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 23:36, 10 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep The books prove its notable.  D r e a m Focus  14:17, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - the article was speedied A7 last week, and 34pin6 had commented to the deleting admin. This was brought back after a speedy delete.  Forgive me for sounding like I'm not assuming good faith, but it makes me wonder if there's some conflict of interest going here.  -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 19:23, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at by conflict of interest, but I will say that I worked damn hard on this article, doing my best to follow the notability and reliability rules, etc. I happen to like ArticleAlley, have used it for years, and think it's worthy of inclusion. Is that a conflict of interest?? The comment I placed on the first admin who prodded the article upset me, yes. Because, I felt s/he was not following civility and proper procedure, I felt s/he dind't even take any time whatsoever to read the article or look at my citations, because, I've seen a LOT of Wikipedia articles with NO reliable sources at LEAST get a proper AfD hearing. So, yes, I was upset, and I told the admin so. I did not attack the admin, I wasn't crude, and if you look at the comment you'll see the comment was restored. I merely stated that admins aren't dictators (though some seem to think they are) and that they, just like we, have to follow "the rules" too. 34pin6 (talk) 01:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That does alleviate my concerns for COI - my apologies for this, 34. I recognize there is an effort, but the effort needs to turn another direction to find things that, as I stated, are about ArticleAlley, not merely pointers to it.  See my comment below. -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 17:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As a complete outsider to this, I don't follow your train of logic. I have found on wikipedia, that in most cases, unless you know something for certain, it is better not to speculate. A more established veteran would probably be screaming bloody murder by such accusations. Ikip (talk) 21:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep the google books seem to seal the deal for me. Ikip (talk) 21:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment The fact that it's cited does not mean that it is notable. We need independent sources giving indepth coverage of the source.  Taemyr (talk) 03:20, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Ikip, the books appear to be nn self-published internet marketing ebooks that include Article Alley in very similar lists of links, but nothing remotely resembling "significant coverage". You need to provide better justification than just a general "keep" and think it should stick. 34pin6, please don't be discouraged...it may just be you created this article before the website could meet Wikipedia notability requirements. Flowanda | Talk 03:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * COMMENT TO CLOSING ADMIN - if the conclusion is delete, I'd recommend a WP:USERFY of the article for user:34pin6 to allow for further refinement and later review. -- Dennis The Tiger  (Rawr and stuff) 17:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: None of the cited sources are usable for notability. To break it down: The Article Ally ref. is self-published. Alexa is raw data. I've seen people try to use this kind of thing before, there can be all sorts of factors that influence these numbers and interpreting them can be tricky, even if it seems it's not. CrunchBase is a combination of raw data and user content, the first was just covered and the second disqualifies it from being reliable. Finally, Google Books just lists some books where it's being used as a reference or it has a brief mention. The quote at the start of this discussion says "... content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works..." and let me emphasize the words "the subject of". Someone could a book that uses the Picayune Daily Mailer as a source about something that happened in Picayune County, but that doesn't make the Picayune Daily Mailer notable in itself. You need someone to write the book (or at least a chapter) about the Picayune Daily Mailer for it to become notable. The same goes for Article Ally, you need to produce an article or a book about the web site for it to be evidence of notability. Brief mention, use as a reference, and use as an example don't count. I wouldn't make such a big deal about this but there several people here who seem to think the Google Books result is a clincher. It's not if you read the guidelines carefully. Chances are if something is notable then someone will have made a note of it that satisfies the guidelines; if someone can find it then they should add it to the article and mention it here.--RDBury (talk) 09:44, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: Of the three main sections in the article, two are completely unreferenced. Of the few references the article does have, most aren't considered to be reliable. But mostly, I can't—and nobody else seems to be able to either—find any sources that are about ArticleAlley. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 01:31, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Very Week Keep. This is a tough one because I think it comes down to the difference between "the spirit of the law" and the "letter of the law". Yes, the letter says delete because most of the mentions are what you might call "trivial". However, the spirit of the notability requirement is that a subject is notable by virtue of having received significant coverage in a reliable, third-party publications.


 * Now, it seems clear that one or two, or even three, trivial mentions of a subject in Google Books, would not be significant coverage, but rather would be trivial. However, if several authors of several different books - each book relating to the subject of Internet marketing or SEO or some other recognized industry - all mention this one website, then that means a good deal more than a trivial citation here or there.


 * Put another way: There is certainly a qualitative difference in the worthiness of a source that only one or two people cite in passing, compared to one where 10 or 20 people cite it in passing. In the latter case, it is clear the subject has penetrated the mind of a certain collective substantially more than in the former case.


 * This appears to me to be the crux of the dispute. After all, "significant coverage" is a bit subjective in itself. And I'm certain we could all come up with a list of subjects about which no one has written elaborately or exhaustively, but which we would nonetheless consider as notable. Artemis84 (talk) 17:21, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * "Significant coverage" is defined perfectly well in Wikipedia guidelines. The problem with all these citations you keep bringing up is they don't contain any information about the subject; you can't use them to write an article. Keep in mind also that ArticleAlly is basically a warehouse for articles written by outside people, so if ArticleAlly appears in a cite then the it's really the person who wrote the article that's being cited and not ArticleAlly which happens to be in the web address.--RDBury (talk) 20:01, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This discussion is getting ridiculous. Is this the future of any AfD flagged by Article Rescue Squadron members? Tag teaming is not an effective or attractive approach, especially when the article is clearly nn. Flowanda | Talk 06:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. No discussion at all in any of the gbooks results. There is nothing to build an article with here. Quantpole (talk) 11:32, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * 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.