Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/GTANet.com


 * 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   redirect to Grand Theft Auto modding. Thanks to for the detailed analysis of sources, that was most helpful to the discussion. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:05, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

GTANet.com

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Fails WP:N and WP:V. The article is filled with sources, but they're all either unreliable, trivial, or primary (mostly reblogged press releases). Many don't even mention GTAN or the individual fansites, and those that do simply give them credit for the tip. There is no significant coverage of the network itself in reliable, third-party sources. Woodroar (talk) 17:32, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game-related deletion discussions.  Woodroar (talk) 17:33, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Keep :Complicated = this page's notability. I was exploring and gathering rules for notability establishment for forums from many wikipedia's guidelines as this page's notability might be in question. So here we go. Important thing to notice: we are talking about internet forum. Forums, by definition, are rarely notable other than to their members. But, and this is a big but, exception proves the rule. And GTANet is an exception. Wikipedia has no clear rule on how to establish forum's notability because forum is so much different media than all other websites.

Forum is community of members, their message board. How to describe an internet forum? It is message board whose formatting is well known: you have registration options, pm option, posting option and that's basically it. So every forum is the same thing other discussion? This assumption is something that drags every discussion about forum in the way of deleting them. Let's take one step backwards. We are not talking about weather gtaforum is good or bad, you may have never heard for it, you may not know what it is about, but understanding that this page has enough notable sources is essential. Wikipedia is very unclear on the subject of forum notability, so I needed to go through various rules to establish the following. First don't assume forum is just a website. Look at forum this way: forum is organization. This organization's residents are called members. This organization's products are called threads, topics, mods, showcases. This is no ordinary organization however. It does have many basic standards as every organization has, but the difference with this one is that we can't separate it from its products. This organization and its products are very compact because they rely on each other - without one, the other wouldn't exist. That's why they are so inseparable. This is what makes internet forum so different. Taking away content of GTAnet from it is like taking all the words from a book.

The evidence that the organization or its product has attracted the notice proves the notability. This organization and its products both were subject of sources and information on the importance of the subject. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are some of the examples.

Content of this subject caused both political and cultural impact. This forum was found relevant enough to be taken down for leaks, it is considered as relevant gta news website for illustrious gaming informers, it is a place which invented modding tools praised both by rockstar and gaming informers, modding section's attention from media is exceptional, if this site was relevant enough to cause media coverage noise among both informers and gta fans with a prank, than there is no way it fails WP:N. Cha cha cha dancer (talk) 18:44, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * WP doesn't need rules for forums—it has the general notability guideline. Let's take a step back. The article has already been refbombed and what's most important is this: what sources discuss the site/forum itself in depth? (Not a product of fans via the site, but the site itself.) And how is the site distinguished from general Grand Theft Auto fandom such that it wouldn't be adequate to include the aforementioned refs in a "fandom" section of the series article? – czar   19:44, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Barring positive answers to the above, I suggest repurposing to Grand Theft Auto fandom (or Grand Theft Auto mod community), slaying all non-secondary sources, and revisiting in the future. CCCD's sources appear to be much more about fan response to GTA than specifically about modding. If the fan activity doesn't fit into a coherent narrative about things fans coalesce around, those citations should be removed as trivia. In essence, the article should be a summary style expansion of a fandom section within the series article. – czar   19:59, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 70 references aren't real number. Out of them 70 there are around 20 that are wp:gng while others should be removed or kept just for statistics (alexa). I understand the problem about this site and notability. There are little sources that discuss site itself. However there are some. They are not exceptionally in depth, but should serve enough for wp:n establishment. This one says as I quote: GTAForums, a popular site for mod makers of the game. The visitors were often anonymous, logging on under assumed names and rarely, if ever, meeting in person... The modding community felt like a bunch of friends trying to solve a mystery. Then, there are articles (by qj and n4g) regarding the takeover of gtaforum by EA, first source on this, by whatifgaming is however not acquirable by wayback. This one can be counted as well as this one. Their main subject may not be giving info on gtanet, but they included enough info not to be treated as trivial. This one is sole covering and giving attention to gtanet and this one gives a lot of in depth to its modding section even though not being subject.Cha cha cha dancer (talk) 20:42, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I tried to destroy as much primary or trivial references I could to make it readable. Cha cha cha dancer (talk) 21:10, 22 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete Per nom, but here's my complete run down of the sources as they are in this revision.
 * Trivial mention that the site admin was invited to the event. No indepth coverage of the site except for the last section, which was written by the admin himself.
 * No coverage of the site itself, only a blurp that "GTAForums" posted some details from a Q&A. This source is about GTA V, not the site.
 * No direct coverage of the site beyond mentioning that specific users and "users" in general from the forum had done things.
 * Content is about GTA V, GTA Forums mentioned only as the source of the comparison images.
 * Best source so far, but the content of the source is primarily about bugs in GTA V, GTA Forums is simply a place people were posting about them.
 * Trivial mention that users of the site built a good guess in a single sentence. Rest of article focuses on GTA V content.
 * Same as above. Article is about GTA V map content, with a trivial mention that users of the forums made their own map.
 * Trivial mention that a user of the forum noticed which actor was listed in IMDB for GTA V....
 * Zero discussion of GTAForums beyond trivial mention as a source. Article is about GTA V
 * Again, trivial mention of GTAForums users as source for leaks.
 * Article is about a hoax done by forum user theNGclan, with only a trivial mention of which forums (GTA Forums)
 * Trivial mention that forum members of GTAForums have made gifs... followed by gifs.
 * Source 7 repeated.
 * Source 12 repeated.
 * Alexa, doesn't help WP:N
 * Small foot note stating that the content discussed is hosted at GTAForums. No direct discussion of GTAForums.
 * Extremely trivial mention of GTAForums, no discussion of site beyond a "shout out"
 * Unreliable source, this is just GTAForums' "social group" on Rockstars "clan" system.
 * Somewhat better source that focuses on a Google Map created for GTA4 by gta4.net. This is the first source that mentions GTANet.com at all. All previous sources have been GTAForums only.
 * No mention of GTANet or any related sites at all, nor any link to them.
 * Unreliable source, download page for a mod. Only mention of GTAForums is a link to a thread.
 * Sources is about a specific mod, only mention of GTAForums is in regards to the mod author posting there.
 * Same mod as sources 20 and 21. No mention of GTAForums other than that the author is a member.
 * No discussion of GTAForums, other than a trivial mention as the source of a quote.
 * Source 19 repeated.
 * Source 24 repeated.
 * Currently a deadlink so cannot comment. Venturebeat seems to be having tech difficulties.
 * Discussion of various mods with no mention of GTAForums or GTANet.com.
 * Game developer's blog, mentioning the GTA4 map created by gta4.net. Discussion is about the map, not the site, which is simply listed as "Via GTANet.com"
 * Another map with a youtube video, no mention of GTAForums or GTANet.com.
 * Bad source. Google Books was searched for "gtamodding", presumably one of the sub-sites of GTANet.com. However it found "GTA Modding" in the title of a reference to a Polish GTA site.
 * Article has a few quotes from Illspirit, admin for gtagarage.com, but is about Hot Coffee mod, not Gtagarage.com or related sites.
 * Bad source. Link to a google book with "gtanet.com" as the search key, but Google replies "0 results found"
 * Bad source, another google book with GTAForums as the search key, but it appears to be failing to match anything in the article, perhaps due to some sort of translation issue.
 * Primary source to gtagarage.com
 * Repeat coverage of GTA4.com's Google Maps version of GTA4. No coverage of site, coverage is about map.
 * No mention at all of GTAnet.com and related sites.
 * No mention at all of GTAnet.com and related sites.
 * Appears to be an unreliable source, reporting a GTANet.com April Fool's Day hoax claiming that EA bought the site.
 * Reliable source covering the same April Fool's Day hoax. At least this is actually about the site somewhat, but notability by itself it is not.
 * n4g.com is not a reliable source, I believe, as it's a news aggregater. This is just a repost of the next source.
 * Can't recall if Qj.net is reliable, but this is an update to the April Fool's Day hoax and trivial.
 * Extremely short blurb about a mod, only mention of GTAForums/GTANet.com is to source it.
 * No discussion of the site beyond noting that a member had scanned an early magazine release.
 * Another article about Hot Coffee Mod. Trivial mentions to gtagarage.com, where the mod had been released.
 * The site went down shortly after leaking that a new trailer for GTA would be released soon. No information on cause. Trivial.
 * Coverage of a GTA 3 mod. Only mention of sites in question is as a link on where to get it.
 * I don't see anything here that helps with WP:N. This is after the main editor involved in the article cleaned out a large number of primary/trivial sources. I think if I removed all the sources I consider at the very best "trivial", if not outright unrelated, the article might have 3 surviving sources, and they'd still be trivial ones. -- ferret (talk) 22:15, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Additional thought/note in regards to CZAR's comments about a fandom article, having checked through many of these sources, I do not believe they would support a fandom article either. -- ferret (talk) 22:17, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 11, 19, 31, 34, 36, 45, 46, these are interpreted especially wrong. First if you want to use google news search on this topic then delete .com of gtaforums and gtanet and you'll see more results. It doesn't mean that the article is trivial just because it's primary subject isn't gtanet or gtaforum. Their content counts as well especially where highlighted. Cha cha cha dancer (talk) 09:15, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This was not a Google search I did. I checked the references you put in the article, as they currently are, and that was the results of clicking them. I'm sorry you disagree with my interpretations, but it's all trivial. There's no in depth coverage of the site itself, just various coverage of things people did or the barest mention of "Via GTANet". The simple fact of the matter is that most fan sites aren't notable, and that's the case here. In addition, there's just so much OR synthesis here. One of the best examples is Many reputable gaming news websites, as well as Rockstar, acknowledged the quality of fan made material on GTANet, with Digital Trends describing it as dedicated. ... None of the five sources for this sentence directly discuss the "quality" of the fan made material. In particular, the "quote" for Digital Trends is misleading. Digital Trends does not call the quality of the material "dedicated", it simply says "A dedicated group of fans" made the map. At best, these sources might lead to notability of the particular artists and teams making these mods (There's not enough for that though). GTANet doesn't inherent notability from them though. -- ferret (talk) 14:03, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:21, 26 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete per ferret's very well-done analysis of each reference. The site is popular, but popularity != notability. The coverage of individual mods which are credited/linked to GTANet is not in-depth coverage enough to satisfy WP:GNG. --Nick&#8288;—&#8288;Contact/Contribs 08:42, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete. Despite being a fairly large article, it doesn't say anything informational or otherwise noteworthy, let alone that being backed up by a valid, objective, well-established source. And as was said before, popularity does not mean notability. --Soetermans. T / C 09:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment, not bangvoting myself, since I asked another user (User:czar in this case) to the AfD-discussion, but will say that I think sufficient WP:SOURCES exist to write a decent Draft:Grand Theft Auto modding article, rescuing the WP:NOTEWORTHY material about GtaForums and GtaGarage (which are two of the sister-sites within the GtaNet group-slash-web-ring-kinda), and their role in Hot Coffee and later mods. This approach would satisfy wiki-honor about the removal of GTANet.com as being WP:NotJustYet, but still simultaneously satisfy WP:PRESERVE for the material therein which *is* reliably-sourced, either in the existing article or on the talkpage.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 00:31, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The new article's live at Grand Theft Auto modding. I gave the creator some advice on my talk page. Redirect to Grand Theft Auto modding as a valid search term for that section. (And redirects are cheap—there's no need to delete the edit history.) – czar   04:05, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What Gtanet article lacks is sources that explore it in-depth. I managed to find a lot of references, however they mostly discuss content found there. I was not aware that main page doesn't inherit notability of content. Therefore, gtanet would need in-depth coverage to be stand alone article. I will change my vote to Redirect to Grand Theft Auto modding.Cha cha cha dancer (talk) 10:04, 29 August 2015 (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.