Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mybulletinboard

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was ambiguous.

I count 6 clear "delete" votes and 4 valid "keep" votes (1 probable troll, 1 anon and 2 users whose accounts were created after the voting started are discounted). Despite a majority to delete, the decision did not reach concensus and defaults to keep for now. Rossami (talk) 06:06, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mybulletinboard
Promotion for software that has not yet have an official release. Zzyzx11 07:16, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep phpbb, vbulletin, IPB, and more have a Wiki. Why not MyBB? -- nakile
 * Delete. Vanity. -- Riffsyphon1024 07:17, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. There's plenty of notable software out there that has not yet had an official release. Does anyone with affirmative knowledge of the software want to comment? --Smithfarm
 * I'll comment. Votes for deletion/Star Wars Quake just closed on vfd about 10 minutes ago or so before I could vote.  Try comparing Google stats between the two.  &mdash;RaD Man (talk) 01:03, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I looked into this. Google search for "mybulletinboard" generated "about 44,400" hits. Google searches for "star wars quake" and "star wars" "quake mod" had 130-136 hits. The VfD result for Star Wars Quake was a keep, on the grounds that it was "notable vaporware", whereas I gather this is real-world software that people are actually using. --Smithfarm
 * Try the same searches in Google Groups; see below. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:20, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Advertising. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:10, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Non-notable, advertising, wikipedia is not a crystal ball. --InShaneee 22:51, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. The MyBB group provides releases from their homepage and they have labeled them Release Candidates leading up to a major update. Dennistt 21:32, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Encyclopedic topic regarding forum software. --Andylkl (talk) 08:30, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, non-notable software. Radiant!Radiant_* 12:03, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Google disagrees with you. 91,300 hits found for "MyBulletinBoard". --Andylkl (talk) 14:03, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep phpbb has a wiki. This is a notable piece of software and has the potential to be more. Not vain since not submitted by creator but by user. --decswxaqz 13:49, 4 Apr 2005 (GMT)
 * No such user as decswxaqz. Nulled vote was cast by 138.253.79.32. Please sign up with Wikipedia and have some edits before voting on VfD. --Andylkl (talk) 14:07, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Extreme keep and delist. Highly notable forum-ware.  &mdash;RaD Man (talk) 01:01, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, agreeing with Radman and the "nulled vote" above. Kappa 11:11, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * keep this please Yuckfoo 01:43, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * "not yet officially released" means that we have nothing verifiable to say that can get this article past a sub-stub. Google hits are a poor guide to notability or impact for software.  Google hits about free bbs software are particularly poor.  For example, of Andylkl's 91,300 hits above, the number drops to 49,400 merely by excluding the myboard.com domain (the software's homespace).  Reviewing the first 40 hits, the most common reference (19 if I counted correctly) are announcements of a particular security vulnerability.  The remainder (download sites and help requests) does to little to convince me that this is a groundbreaking new innovation.  Delete.  Rossami (talk) 03:28, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that new software has to be groundbreaking before it can be included in Wikipedia? --Smithfarm 06:11, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * And you consider 49,400 hits as "mere"??? --Andylkl (talk) 07:58, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: Yes to both.  Let's take the hits first.  My review of the hits convinced me that the straight hit-count was a very poor measure for this particular product.  49k hits when most of them are duplicative and/or trivial do not establish significance on their own.  I could be convinced by other evidence but the hit counts don't do it for me in this case.  To Smithfarm's question, yes I do think that new software has to have some measure of significance if we are to have an article with the potential to rise above the level of sub-stub and that will draw enough knowledgable reader/editors to successfully monitor the article against subtle vandalism.  Minor software products, like all other minor products, increase the maintenance load on our population without adding sufficient value to the encyclopedia.  Again, I'm willing to be convinced that this software package is non-minor but the evidence I've found so far doesn't do it.  Rossami (talk) 14:54, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: Hit counts in a Google _web_ search are easily inflated in many ways. Hit counts on a Google _groups_ search are somewhat harder to inflate artificially and people usually don't bother to do it, so they are a good cross-check. Generally, you'll get on the order of 1/5 to 1/10 as many hits in Groups as you do in Web. For example, a Groups search on exact phrase "star wars quake" yields 44 hits. In contrast, a Groups search on "mybulletinboard" yields no hits at all. Given that USENET is especially interested in computer-related topics, even more so than on the Web, if a piece of software were important and eagerly awaited someone would have mentioned it on USENET. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:17, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: Rossami, please don't remove the strike tags from in the invalid vote above. This is because the "userpage" has no contibutions at all, and if you check the history tab, there's also no such user, only an IP address. --Andylkl (talk) 15:23, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: According to WP:GVFD, you did the right thing by tagging the comment with your findings.  That was sufficient to make sure that the deciding admin knows that the vote was made in bad faith.  Unfortunately, our experience on this page has shown that taking the extra step to strike out the invalidated vote confuses and upsets new users and should be discouraged.  Rossami (talk)


 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.