Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Montada


 * 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. Cbrown1023 23:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Montada

 * — (View AfD)

This article sounds like an advertisement. It does not state what makes it notable. There are thousands of forums on the Internet. We cannot write an article about each one of them. Meno25 01:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete unless someone adds refs supporting notability. Akihabara 02:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete until someone proves it passes WP:WEB. MER-C 06:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete no assertion of notability. Someone please tell my why this shouldn't be CSD A7 --jaydj 06:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)  Weak Keep Author has made significant changes.  Although the Forum Community section still contains self research.  --jaydj 23:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Author has made significant changes to article, citing sources and asserting notability. --jaydj 02:58, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Forum Community section marked for author --jaydj 23:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Section has been cited. Thanks. ← A NAS   Talk? 11:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The section should be cited from external refs, not from the subject's own website. --jaydj 00:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but what other than the site itself can I cite for what boards does it have and how many admins are there. In a similar manner, statistics in German Wikipedia are cited from the site itself. ← A NAS   Talk? 12:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Anas, I made references to the Montada site clearer to avoid confusion.  Cheers.  --jaydj 02:58, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment This forum is ranked 2400-something according to Alexa, which is why I thought it would be OK to write the article. Before writing this article, I saw an AfD which wasn't deleted because someone said it was ranked 20,000 on Alexa, so I went ahead and started the article. I have not read the policies, but if you still think it should be deleted, please do. It was my first edit/article by the way. ← A NAS   Talk? 08:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Alexa hits mean nothing. Inclusion in Wikipedia is not governed by day-to-day popularity rankings.  It is the WP:WEB criteria that you should aim to satisfy, right from the start. Uncle G 15:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. WP:WEB, ghits include the site itself & copies.   SkierRMH, 09:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep A 2400th place ranking in Alexa is notable and google will be strongly biased against arabic language sites. Keep in the interest of WP:BIAS. Perhaps more references would satisfy other editors? Ccscott 11:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * No, that ranking is not notable. See Search engine test for one of the reasons that the Alexa test does not form part of our WP:WEB criteria.  And keeping this purely because it is an Arabic language site does not rectify bias.  It introduces bias.  To answer your question:  The other editors have already said that they want cited sources to demonstrate that the WP:WEB criteria are satisfied.  So please cite some.  Uncle G 15:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I apologize if I was not clear, but I did not intend to imply that the site should be kept solely on the basis of being a non-English site. I was merely observing that finding references for foreign-alphabet web sites will be extremely difficult for the average editor to do and introduces systematic bias as discussed in WP:BIAS. Therefore, in my opinion, subjects like these should be held to a slightly lower standard considering the fact that any references that may exist are inaccessible to most of us. The site is currently ranked the 79th most popular Arabic language site and although WP:SET is by no means accurate or conclusive, I submit it is sufficient in this case. Ccscott 17:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It is not, for the reason already given. That finding references is difficult for some (not all!) editors is not an excuse for using bad criteria, or for waiving the requirement for sources. Uncle G 18:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The article is referenced. Whether these references are sufficient is an editorial decision; one that we appear to disagree. Ccscott 20:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Quite strong keep - It gets 350000 ghits, and that's only in English; I don't think google takes Arabic hits. What more, important events, like carrying messages from Al-Qaeda have come from this site . It satisfies WP:WEB, as this has been carried by well known news outlets (ex: Bloomberg.com). -Patstuarttalk 14:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That Bloomberg article has exactly 1 sentence's worth of information about this web site, which could quite easily be included in Al-Quaeda. WP:WEB specifies non-trivial works, i.e. in-depth information about this web site.  Please cite some sources, independent of this web site, that have more than one sentence of information about it. Uncle G 15:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Asia Times is another. I'm sorry, but I must say that my first reasoning stands as stronger than my second reasoning. WP:WEB is a guideline, and if we it doesn't include a website with hundreds of thousands of hits in a foreign language, and that has notable newsworthy material, well then it should. But, I'm not convinced that al-qaeda parts don't give it WP:WEB credibility. It's a shame we're allowing every stupid character and talisman from the Buffyverse on here, but when we come upon a website with tens of thousands of users that carries information from al-Qaeda representatives, it's considered non-notable for the encyclopedia. Right. -15:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That Asia Times contains 1 sentence's worth of information (the meaning of the web site's name), too. You haven't made a case that this web site actually is "notable newsworthy", because you haven't cited a single news article that is about the web site (rather than one that merely mentions it in passing in 1 sentence and is actually about Al-Quaeda or some other group). As for WP:WEB: That has been in use for a long time now.  "It's only a guideline." cuts no mustard at all.  You are making a bad argument that has been made many times before, and that has been rebutted many times over long since.  For one thing, not having an entire article on something is not the same as not including information about it.  See Notability. As I said, the aforementioned one sentence of verifiable information (now one-and-a-half, with the addition of Asia Times) can be easily included in Al-Quaeda, a very natural home for it.  For another thing, until you can cite as many independent sources for this web site as Bulbasaur cites, your Pokémon argument (for that is what it is) will hold no water at all. Uncle G 18:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete Advertisment FirefoxMan 16:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment I added some references to the article. I also made it NPOV, and you are all right, it sort of sounded like one before. I think it should be OK now. Thanks everyone. ← A NAS   Talk? 18:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * ARTICLE CHANGED SIGNIFICANTLY in response to tag.
 * Keep Editor responded well to criticisms. TonyTheTiger 23:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep article is cleaned up and the article asserts notability enough. By the way, Google Arabic gets close to 19 million hits, though I can't tell how many are relevant. The point is don't use the English language Google to test for notability of non-English topics. Koweja 23:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't use Google to test for notability. Search_engine_test --jaydj 00:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Generally speaking, yes. But 3 million hits is enought to say something. Patstuarttalk 13:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete I would like to see this web site reviewed exclusively by a mainstream media outlet. I noted a mention in a news headline, but I haven't seen the site extensively discussed anywhere.  Point of interest, google hits mean nothing.  Try putting a porn term in there, if that was our measure of notability, just imagine the articles we would have on here. My policy of choice here, would be violates wp:v.  Alan.ca 10:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Has anyone considered what the word Montada actually means? If it does in fact mean forum, try putting the word forum into english google and see how many hits you get!  It's 1,360,000,000 ... I guess the english version of this web site would be more notable. Alan.ca 10:37, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * True, but searching Montada will not give you results similar to what you might get from forum. It would give you similar results if you search using the Arabic word for forum, منتدى. Try searching فورام, which is a transliteration of forum in Arabic. As for a media review, I'm afraid it is almost impossible to ever find one, since Arabic websites aren't really well featured. I'm sure it has been featured on Arabic media, but not much of Arabic media is published online. ← A NAS   Talk? 12:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment - I tried montada.com (not just montada) on English and still got 3,000,000 hits; it got 300,000 on Arabic (as many appear to be from another language). Still, that's an obscene amount of hits for an average forum, and probably the most prominent Arabic forum that exists. I find it frustrating that forum surely has outside media mention, but we can't access it because it's in Arabic. -Patstuarttalk 14:29, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep - clear case of systemic bias. savidan(talk) (e@) 05:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * To call this systemic bias is insulting to the people who participated. Anas has gone through great lengths to improve the article.  Many of the votes were previous to this rework.  I feel that if the same people were to view the improved article, that many votes would change. --jaydj 05:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Whilst the article is certainly informative, it seems to me that notability has not been established. Simply being a popular forum is not, it seems to me, enough to establish notability: there are plenty of forums. It seems to me that notability, for a forum, would arise if the forum were doing something different from other forums. This is why I don't think it is enough to note that Al Qaeda has posted messages on this forum: Al Qaeda need to post messages somewhere, so this could be just a random choice. We need to know what this forum is _doing_ that makes it different and special: notability arises from actions taken, not things that "might have happened anyway". So, I'm suggesting we Delete this article. I should stress that this is not, so far as I can introspect, bias: I've applied the same criterion in plenty of other AfD discussions, including for other forums ( though I haven't been quite so explicit in my reasoning ), and imagine that I will do so again in future forum AfD discussions. Obviously, if my concern is met, I'll change my opinion. WMMartin 18:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Very reasonable. I am not a frequent visitor of the forum, but I do drop by every once in a while. This forum is different; apart from the popularity and Al-Qaeda massages, this forum has had interviews with celebrities, particularly Saudi football players (2 actually, one of them was Yasser Al-Qahtani. I'm not sure though, as I can't recall well) and with a few game designers. Also, this forum has some famous and notable members, mainly journalists and writers. Of course, I can't find any sources to back my claim. :) ← A NAS   Talk? 19:34, 19 December 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.