Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fognews


 * 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   keep. (non-admin closure) &mdash;  Yash [talk] 05:50, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Fognews

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

The reasons:


 * This site does not seem to be significant enough to deserve its own article, at least in English Wikipedia, specifically because:
 * they publish made-up “news”, but without a clear identification of their nature (unless a reader understands their motto in latin);
 * all their stories are in Russian only (by the way, the Russian Wikipedia does not have an article about it, and my personal opinion is that they lack notability even for russian audience, see explanation below);
 * since their “news” are fake, most of citations by other mass-media are either unconcise reposts of “information” or apologies for such unresponsive reposts, or stories about such reposts and how fool are those who repost such “news”;
 * the reference to “The New York Times” cannot be considered a reliable source, because it actually is “International Herald Tribune: Global Opinion — Views from around the world”, located in blogs subdomain, and authored by an expatriate.
 * The article might have been written as a form of self(?)-promotion, taking into account that:
 * the very same day when this article has been created, a comment has been posted on MyWOT rating page, referencing this article in English Wikipedia as a sign of this site's excellence;
 * the aforementioned comment was made by a recently created MyWOT user, which only posted 1 reputation rating and 1 comment (to this site), yet it quickly topped the comment list in the next 6 days — by being cross-approved by a small army of sock puppets.
 * To add to the “dark techniques of promotion” picture, — they might be responsible or somehow connected with the russian McDonald's site deface on April 1, 2012; they even didn't hesitate to post a story about this, including an interview with the hacker (which could also be a fake, unless they know each other in person). Anyway, the deface really took place — I saw it myself, this was exactly how I became aware of Fognews site.
 * By following one of their site visitor statistics (in the bottom of any page), Top.Mail.Ru, one can see that the maximum traffic took place exactly at the time of McDonald's incident.
 * In their article, they say that the hacker put the link to their site on McDonald's page in regard to their bravery in telling the truth(!), which is very doubtful, because their domain was registered just 2 months before that.
 * By observing the very same statistics over the subsequent months, one can see that the traffic is extremely variating, with peaks perhaps connected with other incidents of unfair advertisements.
 * Current popularity is about 1500 daily visitors, which is very few for a “notable” media.

I'm not about to speculate on hacking and rating manipulation, though, this is just to warn about their methods of promotion. The main reason for nomination is the lack of significance. 82.199.107.209 (talk) 19:22, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

N.B. Discussion page created on behalf of IP 82.199.107.209 Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:36, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of News-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 17:46, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 17:46, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep It's received decent coverage in multiple reliable sources (I consider the NYT's international edition blog reliable). It appears to be Russia's version of The Onion:
 * New York Times
 * CBC's Q
 * RBTH

It might only be three, but, that's multiple! SarahStierch (talk) 22:17, 2 January 2013 (UTC) 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, KTC (talk) 00:07, 3 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep - reasonable coverage. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep: The sources are reliable and in-depth enough for American coverage of a Russian "news" source; I imagine that in Russia it is proportionately much more famous. הסרפד (Hasirpad) [formerly Ratz...bo] 01:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep - The sources provided above by User:SarahStierch demonstrate that this topic meets WP:N. Northamerica1000(talk) 12:23, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep: per above. - Ret.Prof (talk) 17:43, 3 January 2013 (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.