Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ask Ziggy


 * 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 delete. A large number of sources were presented, but most editors here felt some of the sources failed WP:SPIP or WP:ORGIND, and in aggregate, they failed WP:CORPDEPTH. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:41, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Ask Ziggy
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

An obsolete advertisement. Checking Google, the top 10 hits are either the company, us and our mirrors, and microsoft. As far as  tell, it's as obsolete as the Windows phone it was designed for, and very much less important.  DGG ( talk ) 05:41, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.  The article notes: "Shai Leib, a third-party developer based in Rocklin, has seen meteoric success of his Ask Ziggy voice-powered app, launched in late December for Windows Phone platforms. Since then, the free app has gone viral worldwide. Leib's fledgling company has attracted two rounds of venture capital funding, including a recently announced $5 million. Ask Ziggy is expected to launch on Android, Apple and Microsoft devices this year, including older versions of iPhones and iPods. Leib, a 20-year software developer, was the sole designer and developer. He said he had tinkered with the app for years, and put the finishing touches on it while working as a consultant, plugging away on it at his home office and the local Starbucks shop. ...  Leib developed the app for Windows Phone because he received some early support from Microsoft, and he has a strong background in Windows systems. He also figured developing the app for the Windows Phone would help distinguish him from the pack of third-party developers. ... Leib named his app after the artificial intelligence computer featured in the old TV show 'Quantum Leap.'" The article contains negative coverage of Ask Ziggy: "Jay Donovan, a tech blogger and app developer, said Ask Ziggy does some functions better than Siri, but struggles with others. 'I find (Ask Ziggy's) performance to be good for some tasks, not so good for others,' Donovan said. 'Either way, it fills a void for Windows Phone users by offering a voice command solution.'"  The article notes: "Siri was once the Apple of my eye. But then I met Ziggy, and things changed. My love affair with Apple’s handy voice-recognition assistant Siri, the crowning achievement of the iPhone 4S, began with my recent switch from Blackberry. But the highly touted feature, made with technology from Burlington-based Nuance, is getting a run for its money thanks to a man named Shai Leib, who developed Ziggy all by himself. The 40-year-old software developer from Sacramento created his voice recognition assistant “Ask Ziggy” three months ago. It comes in the form of a free app available at Windows Phone marketplace and Leib wants to make it available to Apple and Android customers soon. ... I ask Ziggy whether I should gamble, for instance, and he tells me, “It is always good to gamble from time to time. You just have to be careful not to gamble more than you can afford to lose.” Thanks Ziggy. Siri, by contrast, gives me a list of places where I can gamble. Still useful. But Ziggy just understood me better."  The article notes: "Ask Ziggy isn't a dedicated translation app, but it does do a good job of translating phrases. It provides a Siri/Cortana-like interface that allows you to verbally interact with your smartphone. ... Ziggy requires you to manually enable translations. When you do, it will translate anything you say. When testing Ask Ziggy, I made the mistake of saying, 'translate good morning.' It translated the phrase 'translate good morning.' I got over the initial learning curve in about five minutes and the app seemed to do a good job. Ask Ziggy is available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone."  The article notes: "There are a few third-party apps for Windows Phone that aim to offer a fuller, Siri-like experience. I use Ask Ziggy for reminders now, though it’s a far cry from Siri paired with the Reminders app. For one thing, you need to launch the app, instead of holding down a button. Its transcription and interpretation are accurate, but slow. It takes a somewhat odd, tile-based approach to reminders; if you have more than nine, new ones are added off the bottom of the screen. And it takes a whole lot of presses of the Back button to return to the screen where you can give another vocal instruction. Ask Ziggy can handle a lot of other actions though, including calendar-related tasks, emails, directions, and more. Many aren’t handled especially deftly, however."  The article notes: "I ran a quick, informal competition between Ziggy and Apple's Siri, giving Siri--which debuted on the iPhone 4S in October--the same voice commands issued to Ziggy in the video displayed below. Ziggy functions similarly to Siri at following basic voice commands. You can ask Ziggy to phone a contact or dial a specific number, and e-mail or text someone with a certain message. You can ask Ziggy to provide directions, find local businesses, tell you the weather, perform calculations, and handle a variety of other tasks. A help page set up by the developer offers suggestions on what you can ask Ziggy."  The article notes: "Windows Phone owners now have your very own answer to Siri and it's not just some buggy cheap rip-off, it's actually the real deal. Apple's Siri personal assistance app for the iPhone 4S has sparked a slew of Android imitators and now Microsoft's Windows Phone has its own impersonator with the Ask Ziggy app. The free app (which also comes free of any advertising) has, like Siri, the capacity to turn your speech into transcribed text. So that means, just like Siri, you can ask the app all manner of questions and receive surprisingly in-depth results."</li> <li> The article notes: "We've known for a while that the iPhone's Siri isn't actually all that unique -- more of a clever combination of existing technology with a bit of Apple-polish. But now a free app for Windows Phone, Ask Ziggy, goes ahead and proves that outright. The impressive app combines Nuance's great voice-recognition software with some intelligent data fetching. It goes way beyond what Bing Voice is currently able to do on Windows Phone, allowing you to search, dictate, update statuses, do maths, grab the weather, and even ask proper questions."</li> <li></li> </ol>There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Ask Ziggy to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 06:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC) </ul>


 * Comment: Pinging Articles for deletion/Ask Ziggy Inc. participants and closer:, , , and . Cunard (talk) 06:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I do not agree with the removal of a large number of sources and content before the start of this AfD. Cunard (talk) 06:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * (responding to ping) Wow, that last discussion was a while ago. In it, I said the article should be rewritten to be about the app, but it looks like I never got around to it.  That still seems to be a valid response – the sources above look like they're mostly about the app. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 07:16, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * <small class="delsort-notice">Note: This debate has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions.  Jupitus Smart  08:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * <small class="delsort-notice">Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions.  Jupitus Smart  08:50, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

<div class="xfd_relist" style="border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 25px;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete since this is excessively promotional and beyond the lasting improvements both policy and notability, see the highlighted examples: [He] has seen meteoric success of his Ask Ziggy voice-powered app, launched in late December for Windows Phone platforms [and] was the sole designer and developer. He said he had tinkered with the app for years, and put the finishing touches on it while working as a consultant, plugging away on it at his home office and the local Starbucks shop. He also figured developing the app for the Windows Phone would help distinguish him from the pack of third-party developers" and the next quote which supposedly criticizes the subject, is only a one-time quote, not enough for "significant coverage", and the next one is easily as thin, The 40-year-old software developer from Sacramento created his voice recognition assistant “Ask Ziggy” three months ago. It comes in the form of a free app available at Windows Phone marketplace and Leib wants to make it available to Apple and Android customers soon. The next one is a classic case of WP:Not guide since it literally sounds like a guide and the same goes for #4, see and #5  and a later one too, The impressive app combines Nuance's great voice-recognition software with some intelligent data fetching. It goes way beyond what Bing Voice is currently able to do on Windows Phone, allowing you to search, dictate, update statuses, do maths, grab the weather, and even ask proper questions. The principle of articles here is never the amount of sourcing but a matter of our policy, and WP:Not guide is our perfect example of it. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ Talk 20:11, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Winged Blades Godric  05:29, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete -- the sources presented above are not convincing, with some being WP:SPIP, as in:
 * "Leib developed the app for Windows Phone because he received some early support from Microsoft, and he has a strong background in Windows systems. He also figured developing the app for the Windows Phone would help distinguish him from the pack of third-party developers.
 * This type of coverage presents POV of the company founder and his hopes and aspirations. This is not truly independent coverage that would allow to create an article beyond a directory listing, which WP:NCOPR specifically discourages. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:54, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

<div class="xfd_relist" style="border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 25px;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete as, to quote, WP:Notability, articles can only be accepted when notability has been established, and not suggested, since articles must be accepted in an uncontroversial state; an easy task here shows no serious coverage exists outside of announcements or notices, therefore no basis on improvements. SwisterTwister   talk  18:26, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment: an easy task here shows no serious coverage exists outside of announcements or notices, therefore no basis on improvements. – the sources I linked above are not "announcements or notices". Articles that present the "POV of the company founder and his hopes and aspirations" are not automatically "not truly independent coverage". That same article has negative coverage of the subject: "Jay Donovan, a tech blogger and app developer, said Ask Ziggy does some functions better than Siri, but struggles with others. 'I find (Ask Ziggy's) performance to be good for some tasks, not so good for others,' Donovan said. 'Either way, it fills a void for Windows Phone users by offering a voice command solution.'" To present both the founder's viewpoint and an opposing viewpoint to make for a well-balanced article is good journalism. Cunard (talk) 07:18, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak keep - it was hard to find info on the actual company and its history, so it became obvious (as others mentioned) that the software should be the focus. I modified the article to reflect this, but haven't taken the time to change the infobox. The software is notable to me for two reasons.  When it came out, it was the first Windows Phone answer to Siri, cementing its place in voice computing history, and it was developed by one person - a truly remarkable feat that writers mentioned, contrasting with the problems that Microsoft was having developing Bing search (now Cortana).  It got good initial reviews, and one writer even suggested that Microsoft should buy Ask Ziggy.  The news coverage at the time was sufficient to show notability - I don't think that can be taken away. Nowadays, they appear to have gone dark, but I weakly support a keep for the current state of things. <b style="color:#7F007F">TimTempleton</b> <sup style="color:#800080">(talk)  <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  20:06, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, L3X1 (distænt write)   )evidence(  22:26, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per Zppix and K.e.coffman. Rentier (talk) 09:26, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Fails criteria for establishing notability. Even a reliable source can print an interview or a press release and fail WP:ORGIND and/or WP:CORPDEPTH and this is exactly the case for the long list of references provided above. -- HighKing ++ 16:32, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep The sources cited speak for themselves.  Wikipedia decided long ago that the personal opinions of editors could not be a standard for inclusion.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:54, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That's right. Which is why you should make your argument based on policy and guidelines. Otherwise your !vote is the epitome of the very statement you're making above. Unless you were being ironic in which case please ignore. -- HighKing ++ 19:58, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - The sources are hardly the type of in-depth coverage needed to show it passes WP:GNG. In fact, the citations make a better case for an article about Leib, rather than this product. I really wanted to keep this one, because I love the tie-in to one of my favorite sci-fi shows, but the references simply don't warrant it.  Onel 5969  <i style="color:blue">TT me</i> 01:21, 12 August 2017 (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.