Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fandom Wank (3rd nomination)


 * 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. Spartaz Humbug! 03:49, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Fandom Wank
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log )

Just so the whining and weight throwing by other admins stops: same article as the 2nd nomination (resulting in a delete), with four of the eight "sources" being FW sources from either FW, FW's wiki or FW's Yahoo! group. Still non-notable. Sorry, folks. Andrewowen2000 (talk) 18:39, 21 December 2010 (UTC) — Andrewowen2000 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.


 * Delete. Again. - Still not at all notable. A single, low-quality Google News hit. A handful of low-quality hits on Google Scholar. Fails to meet the general notability guidelines. Could be speedied per G4. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:59, 21 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Commment. I tried that already, Scjessey. Apparently we need a new AfD because some new "sources" were added (most of them being FW related). It turns out that the person who deleted the tag was the person who created the page, and that's also against Wiki policy, which was why I kept putting it back up. (I didn't know I wasn't supposed to do that!) But that person was an admin, so... Andrewowen2000 (talk) 19:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * response = clearly not a G4. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  19:11, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Huh? The article seems to be (a) a recreation of an article that was previously deleted after an AfD, and (b) not significantly different from that deleted article. Looks like a textbook G4 situation. -- Scjessey (talk) 12:10, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I removed the speedy tag the second and third times as I agreed it wasn't a G4 candidate. I'm intrigued how the addition of at least three new sources, that can't have been available at the time of the last AfD, means the new article is still "substantially identical to the deleted version".  Yes they may not meet the notability concerns of the last AfD but that's for the community to decide after discussion not for one admin to decide.  It is a clear community consensus that notability (as opposed to indications of possible importance) is decided on by the community not by a single admin.  The addition of new sources means the community needs to decide again.  G4 is not there to be used to forever delete an article that was once decided non-notable - after all the notability of things changes.  Dpmuk (talk) 16:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Just not notable. The website itself doesn't look exactly busy, either. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:23, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 02:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Unlike the situation with the previous deletions of the article, the intervening four years have given us reliable sources that directly attest to the notability of the subject and that provide material for an encyclopedia article about it. Scjessey, why are you looking for sources in Google news when they are already in the article? They consist of four reliably published academic papers, one of which ranked it among the top 50 most influential blogs at the time of writing. I suspect it's become less influential now, but once notable always notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:51, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. In view of the WP:SPA status of the nominator, it is perhaps worth pointing out that the previous AfD was tainted by a bad-faith nomination, from someone with a known antipathy towards FW who has been known to use many different identities including at least two on WP (User:LoomisSimmons and User:Rattlerbrat, the latter of which is indefblocked). —David Eppstein (talk) 04:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Please do not assume bad faith. You seem to be insinuating a connection between the nominator and someone off-wiki without significant evidence. That's not very administrator-like behavior, quite frankly. -- Scjessey (talk) 12:19, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I know nothing about the nominator (obviously, since he or she is an spa). But there is significant evidence of bad faith in the previous AfD that went unnoticed at the time. I'd prefer to avoid making that mistake a second time. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * delete not seeing any significant notability here. A couple of passing mentions. If that's the best that can be mustered at this point then there is no reason to have an article.--Crossmr (talk) 11:43, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:WEB. Still clearly non-notable, just like last time it was deleted.  Salt it this time. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  13:58, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Salt? For an article created four years after the previous deletion, with four new sources? That seems rather extreme. I'd also like to see some actual reasoning for why you think it fails WP:WEB, since it appears on its face to pass criterion #1: it has nontrivial coverage in multiple academic papers, independent of the subject, one of which has the subject in its title. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:01, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. Coming in from the cold with no involvement in prior AFD's for this article, I see a lack of enough reliable third party sources (other than minor mentions) indicating lack of notability. It appears the subject hasn't become notable over time either. Most of the cited sources appear to be generated by primary parties of the site. --Quartermaster (talk) 16:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * So incredibly Delete for lack of notability and reliable sources. Based upon recreation of article despite past deletions, I recommend salting so it cannot be recreated and wasting everyone's time getting it deleted again. This one should have been speedy deleted, and the people who removed the speedy tag were wrong to do so. DreamGuy (talk) 16:32, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Care to explain your reasoning? I state mine for while I removed it but you give no reason beyond "wrong".  Although I accept that people disagree I find it somewhat offensive that you're calling other users "wrong" without giving any reason.  Not to mention the fact the speedy deletions are meant to be uncontroversial and now three editors in good standing have said they don't think this is a G4 speedy and so it's not wrong as the whole point of speedy is that they are meant to be uncontroversial and this clearly isn't.  Dpmuk (talk) 16:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. I must say that the discussion above seems to bear minimal relationship to the actual article, which clearly demonstrates notability with references to four independent reliable academic sources, including a whole chapter about the subject in a book published by McFarland & Company. I note that nobody above has offered any explanation of what they feel is wrong with these sources. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The McFarland reference is simply an unimpressive collection of essays about non-notable subjects by non-notable authors, freely downloadable by anyone who wants it. I totally reject the characterization that these sources are "reliable academic sources" because it stretches the normal Wikipedia definition of "academic" significantly. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:35, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * response - How so? McFarland is a solid publisher, if not one of the biggies. Your asertion seems rather inexplicably harsh. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  20:36, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not questioning the publisher (low volume outfit known for publishing stuff out of mainstream, such as obscure academia), but rather I am saying that the work is unimpressive. Incidentally, I checked to make sure that eBook publisher had DMCA compliance before posting the link, so I've edited your refactoring of my comment that included the rather accusatory "probable copyright violation" comment. -- Scjessey (talk) 21:01, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Didn't mean to insult you, Simon; but I don't find the disclaimers on that website at all convincing. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  21:52, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * So your argument is based on your own assessment of the impressiveness of the source, rather that the publisher's assessment. We make decisions here on the basis of independent reliable sources, not the subjective opinions of individual editors. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, my recommendation for deletion is based on many things, not least of which is what I perceive to be unimpressive sources that do little to assert the notability of this website. Other factors include the lack of substantial, significant changes since the last time it was deleted and the reliance on links from the subject website itself for sourcing. There's no evidence of mainstream notability. And Phil, as someone with almost as much Wikipedia experience as you, I don't need to be lectured on Wikipedia's decision making processes. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:12, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Please explain where in WP:GNG and WP:WEB it says that the sources need to be "impressive". Because I don't see that word there and frankly, it seems gratuitously subjective. Are we following what the actual notability standards say or are we making up new ones to justify our personal tastes? And why on earth should the fact that the book publishers have allowed its contents to be freely available be a strike against it? That seems a strange prejudice for a Wikipedian to have. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:54, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * "Impressive" is my own word choice, but essentially I am saying that these low-quality sources fall foul of the "trivial source" aspect of both WP:GNG and WP:WEB. And yes, there is a degree of subjectivity involved - that is, after all, why we have these AfD discussions in the first place. Please strike out your misplaced comment about the availability of the material for download. I made no suggestion that this was a "strike against it" (in fact, I personally feel exactly the opposite in cases like this). I mentioned it was available to download so that editors involved in this AfD could download the book and see the section that is being used as a reference in order to assess it. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:21, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, I misread your statement about online availability. But I believe you are likewise badly misreading WP:GNG regarding what it means for a source to be trivial. It has nothing to do with how obscure the source is; rather, it is about the depth of coverage of the subject within the source. Two of the sources contain about a page on the subject, one of them is an entire book chapter about the subject, and the fourth is indeed only a passing mention, but one that strongly asserts notability (it says the subject was at that point in time among the most 50 influential blogs in the world). That seems very far from trivial to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * (after ec) - I think you're missing the point. The sources themselves aren't notable/mainstream sources. They're obscure references. There isn't a single mainstream media source to demonstrate the notability of the website. That's what I mean when I say "impressive" with respect to sources. On their own, they are not enough to assert notability. This represents the dividing line between those who say "delete" and those who say "keep". The fourth source you refer to (50 influential blogs et al) is a dead link, BTW. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:08, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not the encyclopedia of celebrities and sports. It is an encyclopedia of human knowledge. There is nothing in WP:GNG or WP:WEB about the sources being "mainstream media", and for good reason. If we required sources to be in mainstream media only we would have to delete 90% of our science/technology/academic humanities coverage. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:14, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The purpose of AfD is to solicit opinions from Wikipedians about whether or not they think an article should be deleted. I've given my opinion and I've given my reasons. I think the article should be deleted because the subject doesn't meet the guidelines for notability. I am sorry if you disagree with my view, but that cannot be helped. It's a long time since I've received this much harassment in an AfD, so I'm dewatchlisting this page immediately. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:40, 24 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment - It troubles me that certain editors commenting in this AfD have been unusually hostile. I would ask everyone to assume good faith and respect the opinions of your fellow editors. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:21, 24 December 2010 (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.