Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Banana Pi


 * 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. Even after disregarding the more obviously canvassed, meat- or sockpuppeted "Please Retain" opinions, we don't have the support for deletion needed, and because the topic does seem to have coverage in sources, I can't just override all "keep" views. I recommend that cleanup is attempted before a renomination.  Sandstein  09:08, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Banana Pi

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

This wiki article was created by a COI user and mirrors relevant advertising material, misleading claims and all. This in itself would not lead me to file this request, but the fact that one of Sinovoip's promotional websites for this product links to this article as promotional material I find particularly disconcerting. As far as I can see, most of the article would have to be thrown out and rewritten to justify the removal of the advert template, which may make it a target for COI vandalism.

While we're at it, I'm not sure this article meets WP:NOTE criteria. Acceptable third party sources are quite thin on the ground, most of the press it receives (that I've read at least) either reiterates misleading claims from the advertising material or simply nods at its existence.

I suppose I should declare my own COI: I have been burned by the manufacturer's misleading claims over this product line. If they want to lie on the internet, that is well and truly their prerogative, but I believe Wikipedia is not the place for them to hawk their faulty wares. Bawb131 (talk) 01:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete This product is merely a clone of another product known at the "Raspberry." Most of the sources given are merely links to technical specifications. Known of the sources comes anywhere close to conferring notability. Article is heavily promotional. I declined speedy deletion as spam, but the article does come close, but not quite blatant spam. Article was written by a single purpose, COI, account. Safiel (talk) 07:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Please Retain This article is a very useful summary of the product family, which I find very useful. It is very difficult to summarise or document any product family without duplicating the kind of information that you would expect to find in product marketing material, and as such this is not a valid argument for deletion. Nor is it a valid to exclude an article because you don't like the company or persons associated with it. This product exists, there is a large community using and interested in it, of which I am a member, there every reason that its existence should be reflected in a Wiki entry.


 * I make a substantial donation to Wiki every year because I think it is a fantastic resource, in fully support this material being included in Wiki. What's missing in the article is some background to the manufacturer, the design and motivation of the product, this is easily solved by "adding" not "removing. For me personally it is not the most important content.


 * Please retain . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.200.189.163 (talk) 10:17, 22 December 2015 (UTC)  — 31.200.189.163 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.


 * To be clear, I haven't proposed deletion because I "don't like the company or the people associated with it." I'm just as dedicated to the cause of a free encyclopaedia as you, and to dismiss my proposal by mentioning that you "make substantial donation[s]" isn't really fair. My proposal for deletion is as stated above: lack of good third party sources, misleading and/or false claims and the fact that this company has decided they can leverage Wikipedia for their own ends. The lack of appropriate citations feeds the propagation of incorrect information, and as for the last surely you don't think it is appropriate for your donations to be used to help deceive consumers? Regardless of whatever biases I'm trying to overcome, it still meets Wikipedia deletion guidelines. Bawb131 (talk) 10:53, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: both the NOM and the other comments above appear to be arguing WP:ILIKEIT or WP:IDONTLIKEIT when the standard should be references in high quality secondary sources. I'm seeing articles in  The Register, Digital Trends, and a range of other publications which suggest enough WP:RS for notability. The NOM has declared a WP:COI, it seems to me the issues highlighted could be discussed on the page and if necessary referenced rather than calling for a deletion.  JMWt (talk) 13:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Before I say anything further, I must admit my Google-fu is rather lacking. I wouldn't have opened this AfD based on my own results alone, but the (rather brief) talk page discussion and a heavy lack of other citations on the page itself leads me to think WP:RS is a reasonable concern. I also want to make clear that although I do have a COI as stated in the NOM, it serves as a motivation and not a reason (if that makes any sense). The proposal was not put forward in the spirit of "I was wronged and I want to wrong in return" (as has been suggested) but rather I'm just seeking to ensure that the information available from Wikipedia reflects the reality of this product line rather than the falsehoods present in the official advertising material. Unfortunately, sources that counter the official advertising material do not (AFAIK) meet WP:RS as they are in the form of forum posts and the like. Given this is the case, as well as the article's COI origins and the potential for further COI vandalism it is my opinion that the best way to achieve neutrality is the removal of the article in question.


 * I understand the continual allusion to 'misleading claims' without further elaboration may raise some red flags, so here's what I know (mainly pertaining to the R1 board, since it is in my ownership and hence the one I've read most closely into):
 * The "open source" hardware in question actually has no source code available. Like, at all. The best I was able to find was the source for the DTB, which alone lands it pretty far away from credibly being advertised as "open source." This appears to be the case for all products in the line, not just the R1.
 * The R1's gigabit switch performs rather horrendously. There are forum posts detailing benchmarks here and here. In my own benchmarks, data across the switch gets around 300Mbps but data to the R1 itself is as low as 60Mbps, a full 16x slower than the article mentions.
 * The R1's wifi performance is not great either (if you can manage to get it working without losing power to the board!). This blog post mentions speeds of 32/11Mbps one foot away when the product is mentioned in the article as achieving a maximum throughput of 300Mbps. I understand the legalese "theoretical maximum" nonsense, but if a distance of ~30cm causes it to perform 9x slower than the theoretical maximum than I don't think the theoretical maximum is a particularly relevant figure.
 * The article implies that you can actually power the thing. Given how much people's results seem vary, I guess there's some variation between different individual boards, but in my case using two USB OTG cables to supply power yields a board that with occupied SATA port will lose power if you stand it upright, let alone if you attempt to use the wifi AP or HDMI. See this for further info.


 * These are some of the issues that plague just one device, whose market penetration is so low that the only relevant sources don't meet WP:RS. I've been sitting on this for some time, but with this information in mind I really can't see how WP:IDONTLIKEIT applies. Any reliable source I can find about this particular board either omits the above facts (which render the device itself a hair above useless and Sinovoip's activities dishonest at best and predatory at worst) or doesn't meet WP:RS criteria. Bawb131 (talk) 14:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I cannot speak to the validity of your technical knowledge here - and I can't find the relevant policy shortcut - but we can't just take your word for the fact there is a problem, the whole of this encyclopedia is based on citing relevant secondary sources. And as I said above, there appear to be independent secondary sources which give notability. As Safiel says below, I also have no beef with this product and had never heard of it before. My feeling is that there is enough mentions in secondary sources to give WP:GNG, that's it. JMWt (talk) 17:16, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment In answer to some of the comments above, I would note that my personal vote is not based on a like or dislike of the product. I never even heard of the thing prior to my stumbling across this article on speedy deletion patrol. As I said in my deletion comment, most of the sources are merely technical specifications and none seem to point to the subject satisfying WP:GNG. While clearly the other participants may have personal feelings one way or the other towards the subject of the article, my vote is based purely upon the notability guidelines. Safiel (talk) 15:04, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment Now having registered, can I first say that my request to have the article retained is because I genuinely value it. I do accept that it is far from perfect, but it is a good starting point for something better. Nobody can help to improve it if it no longer exists because it has been removed. To this end I have put my money where my mouth is and begun to chip away at the article to improve it, though I don't have much spare time so this will be a slow and intermittent process. This might be the more positive way to deal with such an article, particularly if you have sufficient knowledge to recognize and correct its deficiencies. It is also a way to contribute to Wiki, though I must say a cash donation is much easier!. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ianmbetts (talk • contribs) 01:53, December 23, 2015‎ (UTC)


 * Great! I don't disagree, editing is a much better option, but as JMWt said above the basis of the Wikipedia project is reliable third party sources. In the absence of WP:RS to contribute to the article, this NOM has been filed referencing non-WP:RS sources. But in any case, I wish you luck. Bawb131 (talk) 10:27, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:04, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 02:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Please Retain Why would you delete the page? It's a relevant page for a real product. I have one of these boards and so do a lot of people. This is relevant and useful. Thanks! Alexandrujuncu (talk) 22:39, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 01:12, 5 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Please Retain I see no violation of NPOV. Banana Pi is most advanced board from the family of "Raspberry Pi like" devices. This fact is not (strongly) advertised on the page (even could be). Every Banana Pi board is for technical people like different (new and shiny) smartphones from Apple/Samsung. These boards are very popular in technical schools and technical universities (I'm teaching on both types of these schools). Microsoft put Windows 10 IoT Core on these boards. On the page some technical details could be deleted because are duplicated. --Milan Kerslager (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Please Retain I can't actually pin down any major problems with this article upon closer inspection. Upon reading everyone's arguments I'd point out there seams to be a lot of WP:WEASEL used to defend and attack the deletion of this page. I would point out that the number of uses makes me uneasy as well. I would suggest some improvements or more sources pointing to the problems discussed above in the article itself if such problems exist. Andrdema (talk) 06:01, 6 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Please Retain Despite reading the comments, I don't really get why this page is up for deletion. This article is relevant to anyone interested in the ongoing development of SOC IC's and the single board computers they enable. I have one of these somewhat underpowered boards and use it as a general PC every day. If it is to be considered for removal, then why aren't the articles about RaspberryPi, Beagle Boards, and any other number of these devices also up for removal. (is there a 'Remix mini' article yet?) I have reread this article, and I don't find it advertorial. Even if it was, the appropriate course of action would be to correct the article. This piece of hardware IS entitled to an entry in the encyclopaedia. Kevbo (talk) 14:36, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Please Retain I agree with the others. Horrible that such useful articles can be put up for deletion.  OlavN (talk) 08:20, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Please Retain I am very interested in these types of products, and it's extremely helpful to have a lot of openly reviewed material about the BananaPi here in one place. Any product with market traction has notability. If there are errors in the article, correct them! Countless articles on Wikipedia describe commercial and open source products of all kinds, many of which exhibit some degree of promotionalism. Nor is WP noted for consistency, as articles are often cobbled together from many edits, becoming lopsided in their coverage. Thus it is unfair to single out this one. Wikipedia already has a bad reputation for excessive and often politically motivated deletion. Indeed it has given the term "Deletion" (from the body of human knowledge) a whole new and rather unsavory meaning. Please don't make it worse. A3burke (talk) 00:06, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I spent some time fixing the English, toning down sales talk, and correcting minor format errors. I have NOT tried to verify the truth of the content, such as whether the hardware is actually open source or not. A3burke (talk) 08:33, 13 January 2016 (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.