Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hogwarts Live


 * 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. - Mailer Diablo 15:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Hogwarts Live
No indicated notability aside from some obscure web awards, seems to fail WP:V, WP:WEB and WP:SOFTWARE. Some additional info: Alexa ranking is 29,607 and a google search delivers about 22,400 hits. Peephole 17:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. I could swear I've voted in a previous AfD for something like this. --Core des at talk. ^_^ 06:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, fails WP:V. Michael 07:54, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete Although I am not logged in at the moment, I also nominate this article for deltetion on the grounds that the sites google search numbers are not very accurate. The search engine will bring up all releveant searches for "Hogwarts Live," but in te book series, the students studying to become wizards live at the hogwarts castle. So "Hogwarts Live" doesnt necceraly bring up a huge amount of site rankings because its a popular site, but a popular collection of words. If my not logging in hurts credibillty, I can always do just that, but I have already typed my response :p —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.161.30.232 (talk • contribs) 12:09, 4 August 2006.
 * Actually, this doesn't seem to happen as much as you might expect - it looks like most of the Google results are actually about the game in question. - makomk 16:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm reposting what was said on the talk page here in defense of keeping the article, so we can get both sides of the issue. --71.202.96.225 23:55, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I just happened to notice that this article was put up for deletion. I’m a former member of Hogwarts Live and first recall reading about it in a Denver Post article concerning the Harry Potter phenomenon and the rise of online roleplaying games dedicated to the subject. The article was not very well researched, but I do believe if one could find it that it would prove this site’s notability, correct? This article was published about a week or two previous to the release of the last book in the series.
 * Does anyone know where that article is? I just took a look at the sites Alexa rating and compared it to other notable sites, and it seems to be way up there in terms of traffic and number of reviews (29,607 - this beats out HPANA in terms of reach). I've seen it mentioned on another Wikis as well as Harry Potter sites, I'd definitely say it's notable considering it's probably one of the top 5 most frequented non-official Harry Potter-related sites on the net.  According to one of their MoTDs they received 22,558,769 pageviews for the month of June, and 1,332,402 pageviews for the day of July 11, 2006, which is far more the reported traffic for many other sites that have Wikipedia articles. As far as text-based RPGs go it is also the most visited/popular RPG according to the "Top > Kids and Teens > Games > Online > Roleplaying > Harry Potter" category on Alexa/Amazon .  --Theluse 15:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep I dont understand why you plan to delete it. I know for a fact as a member of the site that It is very Active. Looking at the online members alone shows how many members there are 317 members online, And that is not even loaded. I think the article tells the truth. -Michael [RikuSaotome] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.175.142.68 (talk • contribs) 03:01, 6 August 2006.
 * Comment Hogwartslive has about 200 to 300 members on all the time. Its always being updated and getting bigger. It has alot more members and activity than some Harry Potter sites. Its also one of the best Harry Potter Rpg's on the net...and trust me i have looked at a lot. -Coby —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.19.241.206 (talk • contribs) 03:09, 6 August 2006.
 * Comment The 6K+ members are active, they delete users who haven't logged in in over a month. --71.202.96.225 03:52, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Keep Seems to be notable, especially if it's been mentioned in a newspaper and a television program. All it really needs is sources. The Denver Post and the IPTV program could be referenced, even if they're inaccurate (if this is the case, something like "The Denver Post says that..." would work). The Alexa links could be used as references too, when citing claims about the game's popularity. Definately salvageable with some referencing. -kotra 09:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC) Delete I believe this article should be deleted for several reasons. First, the wikipedia article for "Hogwarts Live" fails to mention its prior violation of the creative commons license(the license for the source code it uses). This article seems to have several other biases which conflicts with wikipedia's philosophy on neutrality. It is little more than an advertisement for the site, rather than an accurate wikipedia entry on the subject. A properly formatted article would include information regaurding licencing issues and problems with source code redistribution within the open source community. The article is mearly a "we like this website" entry. I also agree with the above posters comments on the number of pages referencing "Hogwarts Live" on a search engine would be highly inaccurate due to the fact that in the book series students LIVE at the HOGWARTS castle. Lastly, have to disagree with one of the above posters: The sites online count can not be entirely accurate either because the auto-logout time is 10,000 seconds, which is a very long time. A user can appear on the online list for almost 3 hours after they stop playing. The "online count" that the software uses makes the assumption that a user "logs off" when they have finished a session. Unless a user is accessing the site though a school, library, or some other public computer system, there is no need for a user to "log off" officially. This means that if a player is "playing" for five minutes, he/she will still appear to be playing to the rest of the world via the online count for an addtional two hours and forty-five minutes. Should the Hogwartslive people wish to use active players as a justificaton for inclusion on wikipedia, they should be willing to use a counting system that reports such player activity accurately. --Andrew 9:22am August 9th, 2006. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.121.176.182 (talk • contribs) 13:23, 9 August 2006.
 * Keep As a staff member of Hogwarts Live, I can verify that the site is incredibly active, it is my responsibility to run maintenance on the site, including removing users who haven't signed in in a long time, and I run my deletion script hourly with over 6000 active users remaining (6336 at the posting of this comment) which you'll note is a larger number then either of the usercounts listed on the Legend of the Green Dragon listing on Wikipedia. One look at our stats page shows that we are consistantly receiving over 1 million pageviews each and every day.  We were indeed featured in a Denver Post article in the summer of 2005 about the rise in popularity of Harry Potter RPGs, and among sites running the LoGD code, we have one of the highest online counts at any given point in time.  I urge you not to delete this page, while it really should be updated (I'd be glad to help), it does not deserve to be removed.  The site deserves the notability that it has received and will continue to receive. --Portalcap 04:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC) (known on HogwartsLive as Edmund)
 * Keep I agree, I think sources need to be cited, more text should be added regarding it's notability, and the template tag Template:Cleanup-afd should be applied so that it can be cleaned up to better conform with policy. --71.202.96.225 06:44, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep I know for a fact that Hogwarts Live was featured as Site of the Day on an IPTV program in England a few months back, someone was talking about it in the Great Hall. Anybody? I don't want this to be deleted. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.132.32.3 (talk • contribs) 06:53, 6 August 2006.
 * Delete nn website, fancruft. Eusebeus 16:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds like an entirely reasonable way of counting users to me; being a browser-based game, there's no real way of telling if someone is still online. Oh, and the Google search was for the word "Hogwarts" immediately followed by the word "Live", which doesn't come up in contexts not related to this game as much as you might expect. - makomk 16:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 *  AFD relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.  Please add new discussions below this notice. Thanks, Mailer Diablo 23:17, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom as non-notable stuff. -- Big  top  04:19, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been added to the list of CVG deletions. RandyWang ( chat me up/fix me up ) 21:11, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as NN. Nickieee 22:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete NN pottercruft. Macktheknifeau 06:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete NN Musaabdulrashid 07:29, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment In response to Andrew's message above, I would like to point out that HogwartsLive never violated the Creative Common's License, our modified version of the source code has been available throughout our development of the project, we also actively submit new modules to the LoGD community, a couple of my own becoming popular (if you want proof of that, do a Google Search for my name, Nicholas Moline, you will find hundreds of listings that correspond with the module list on hundreds of LoGD installations). As for the online player count, I very commonly purge the entire online list, knocking every user out of the game, and within 10 minutes the online list is back to between 100 and 400 online users. I do not wish this comment to be the insight of a flame war in this thread, however your previous statement was defamatory, which I assume you knew, because you did not actually sign your post, you just put a name and a date there. Portalcap 17:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment There is going to be an obvious bias in this response and this should not be counted as a vote to keep the article. I will state for the record that the site in question is my own.  I am familiar with the community's opinions on Fancruft as well as Wikipedia policy and guidelines.  I have been asking other Wikipedians on their opinions concerning whether this article should be deleted and have received mix responses.  I know personally that I have found articles that in many respects are less notable than this one, such as ISFDB, Archspace, or HPANA, useful, educational, and even interesting.  Notability seems to be based on one’s own subjective interpretation of whether or not a source is reliable.  I would like to examine this page, which shows not only that the Hogwarts Live article is read by a great deal of people, but that many websites directly related to the topics of Harry Potter or Roleplaying are referring users to Hogwarts Live. As you can see for the month of July, 1369 users were referred to HL via its Wikipedia entry.  The term "sciencecruft" has sometimes been used as a sarcastic opposition to deleting obsolete topics due to certain biases concerning their pertinence. There is no official policy on fancruft, and I would not consider it a legitimate reason to delete an article.  Wikipedia aims to incorporate elements of "specialized encyclopedias" among other things.  I do believe this article could be rewritten to be more succinct, clearer, and verifiable. To quote policy: "some editors may object if you remove material without giving people a chance to provide references. If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, a good idea is to move it to the talk page." Also, I feel that the fact that this site receives a considerably large number of pageviews (over 1 million a day) in comparison to many other websites that have Wikipedia articles, is testament to its notability.  Alexa lists HL in a similar traffic range as sites such as Pepsi.com, FreeAdvice.com, and MPOGD, all of which are popular in their respective industries.  Just to get this out of the way I would like to state that I disagree with the recent proposed deletions of  Space - Glory Through Conquest, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, List of Final Fantasy characters (including many others), and will proceed to further voice my opinions on this matter on their appropriate deletion discussion pages. However, if I am indeed mistaken and none of these articles are worthy of Wikipedia entries, I’ll be more than happy to copy the contents of these articles over to a Wiki I started as a sort of supplement to Wikipedia, which does not allow as much freedom for fans to create detailed articles on the minutiae of certain fandom due to the fact that the average reader will not find them pertinent or in many cases "notable".  This is just my perspective on this matter, not a vote to keep or delete this article, as I said my opinion is obviously biased, and is more of a assertion of what I believe are the merits of these articles that are often described as fancruft. Thanks for hearing me out. :) --Ariad o ss 18:07, 14 August 2006 (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.