Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rafed.net (2nd nomination)


 * 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 (as no consensus). -Docg 11:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Rafed.net (2nd nomination)

 * — (View AfD)

A prior no consensus closure was overturned at deletion review for lack of reliable sources and is now back for a second round here. Please consider both prior discussions before commenting. This is a procedural nomination, I have no opinion. ~ trialsanderrors 01:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm spamming the participants in the deletion review. Just so we all know. -  brenneman  02:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think to maintain neutrality per the sexy new WP:CANVAS also informing participants in the first AfD would be in order. ~ trialsanderrors 02:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ahh. Bugger. Another new "proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process." I'm about to go offline and eat food.  I'll do it when I come back, but to avoid any appearance of impropiety, the non-overlapping group is below. - brenneman  02:26, 4 January 2007
 * SkierRMH &bull; Itaqallah &bull; Trebor &bull; Zereshk &bull; Jayden54
 * Delete, no references which explain its notability. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong keep

WP:WEB states the following: Web-specific content[3] is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:


 * 1) The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself. This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper and magazine articles, books, television documentaries, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations.

In other words, if Rafed.net is the subject of more than one (1) non-trivial (2) published works (3) whose source is independent, then the site is notable per WP:WEB. It clarifies that this includes published works in all forms, without giving restrictions. It does not demand that the other sources need to be (a) Notable (b) reliable or (c) neutral. This is indeed when writing an article, but not to establish notability of Rafed.net, all according to WP:WEB.

As an example of this, i present Faith Freedom International, an anti-Islamic website created by Ali Sina. It has underwent an afd were it was deleted, but then it was recreated and underwent a second afd. The result was no consensus. After all this process, the main article does not present one single (b) reliable source or (c) neutral source, in accordance to WP:WEB.

As for this site:
 * Daniel Heradstveit, Helge Hveem in his published book Oil in the Gulf: Obstacles to Democracy and Development writes regarding Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: "several Iran-based internet sites, such as www.Rafed.Net, contribute to spread sistanis scholarship and legal opinions".

This is a published book using Rafed.net as a prime example of sites that spread Sistanis scholarship. Now, for those who do not know, Sistani could arguably be said to be the main leader of Shi'as around the entire world, following his equally well known teacher Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei.


 * Joshua Teitelbaum, a Senior Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University writes: "Many in Saudi Arabia’s minority (about 12%) Shi‘i population seem to spend much of their Internet time at Arabic-language Shi‘i sites in Iran. Rafed.net, based in Qom, and other such sites, report that 45% of their traffic comes from the Kingdom. These sites are apparently banned, but the owners switch domain names often and users have developed techniques to get around the Saudi censor."

I would like to point out that Iran is specifically writing this site in Arabic, a foreign language to Iranians, in order to target Shi'as in Saudi Arabia! Qom, were the site based on, is the main Shi'a center for scholarship in the entire world and has a long history as such, back to 1503 CE, having a Islamic history back to 7th century.


 * Joshua Teitelbaum was referencing Joseph Braude in his published work Iran: A Growing Internet Market Weathers a Temporal Storm by Pyramid Research Advisory Service, May 18, 2001.


 * This is again echoed by shianews.com in their list of blocked Shia sites in Saudi Arabia.


 * Alexa Internet, a provider of information on the web traffic to other websites gives this site a 15 000 trafik rating and ranks it as the third most popular Shi'a internet site, only followed by al-shia.com, the site of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani himself with 14000 hits  and  Islamic Republic News Agency of Iran with 12000.


 * Google itself manualy Page ranks this site among the top ten Shi'a sites.


 * seestani.com gives a full review of the site, allas in Arabic.

Now, this should not come as a surprise considering that the main audience of the site are arabs, easly seen by the fact that the opening page of http://rafed.net/ is in Arabic.


 * al-shia.com, the site of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani himself also has a page about it in Arabic

Now, after all this, if you still do not feel that WP:WEB is meet, i would like to remind that it is a guideline designed to establish notability, it is not law. In the end, you are free to use it as a guideline.

Now, considering that it has been mentioned as an example by (a) multiple scholars from universities and also by (b) two published books, (c) that it is baned in one country, (d) that the ban is discuses and that even though it is baned there, (e) it gets 40% of its traffic from there, (f) considering that it is affiliated with Sistani, the Shi'a leader with most influence in Iraq and the world and that Sistani reviews it on his own site, (g) and that it outrivals all other Shi'a sites except sistanis own site and the Iranian official site, can you with good conscience state that this site is non-notable? Does it hurt wikipedia do represent this site, with all this infomation, or does it become more informative internet site?

Also, the site is mainly in Arabic, and i could not do a better job proving its notability and presenting full reviews in Arabic, since i do not know Arabic. --Striver - talk 03:02, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * This reference is just a drive-by mention, it is NOT an article which discusses the website. Find ONE article, in English or Arabic, in which the discussion of rafed.net is the FOCUS of the article. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I did, here, did you miss it? And unless im misstaken, so does this. Here is how you confirm it: Go here, sistanis own page. It mentions rafid.net and gives an arabic string to the right of it, "مركز إحياء التراث الإسلامي", to my knowledge, Arabic for "Rafed Network for Cultural Development". You can see that the same string is used as the headline of both the links i provided in this reply to you. --Striver - talk 03:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Note I've done a machine translation of the second source mentioned in the immediately preceding comment. It's on the talk page of this AfD. I'll leave someone else to do further translations if they wish. Tyrenius 03:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment Faith Freedom International has a better citation (from law.harvard.edu) for being banned in Saudi Arabia than Rafed.net, which, BTW, appears in the 2002 list of URLs Blocked in Saudi Arabia - "R" from Harvard, but that's beside the point, which is that faithfreedom.org has reliable sources ... and for the record, Ali Sina and faithfreedom.org are now just redirects to that article because they both failed WP:N ... Rafed.net should redirect to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, just as Al-islam.org should be a redirect to Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project (which in turn should be a mergeto with The Aalulbayt (a.s.) Global Information Center, but Striver removed the tag.) --Dennette 08:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I moved your comment, commenting in the middle of my text hinders the flow of it. peace.--Striver - talk 10:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I dont understand. First you argue that FFI has a better relibale source, then you note that Rafed.Net is also included in that source. How is the FFI a better source, if Rafed.Net shares the same source? I was not aware of the source, so thank you for presenting it. Now, you just characterized the law.harvard.edu as a RS. Well that's great, since that would mean that you now acknowledge that Rafed.Net has RS. This is not a requirement from WP:WEB, as is evident per my above argument, but it is great that we have more than required. As for Al-islam.org should redirect to Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project, that is not relevant to this afd, as for Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project redirecting to The Aalulbayt (a.s.) Global Information Center, why should it? They do not share the same source, one is an organization of volunteers, the other is the organization of Grand Ayatollah. And that goes against merging this to The Aalulbayt (a.s.) Global Information Center. They are independent of each other, Sistani's greatly endorses the work of Rafed.net, and Rafed.net are in a kind of "internet information warfare" directed from Iran to Saudi Arabia, but that does not mean that Rafed.net and Sistani are dependent on each other. Close relations and being allies is not synonymous to dependence.--Striver - talk 11:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 *  Delete: Merge and redirect: The core issue is WP:NPOV ... if Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is the source behind Rafed.net, Al-islam.org, al-shia.org, and sistani.com, then how can any citations from one of his websites be viewed as "independent" coverage to satisfy WP:V or WP:N for another of his websites? Yes, Sistani is notable, but his websites are not notable just because he is, and although they are worthy of mention in his article, this one certainly does not have enough verifiable notability to justify its own article in Wikipedia ... as for using popularity based on Alexa and Google PageRanks as a substitute for WP:N guidelines, see The Harley-Quinn.com Argument ... if the website's only claim to notability is its popularity, then Sistani's article should have the sentence "'One of his websites, Rafed.net, is one of the most popular Shi'a websites according to Alexa internet and Google Directory.'" and use the citations ... but a Wikipedia article based only on that? I don't think so! &mdash;Dennette 08:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Your argument is for "Merge and redirect" not "Delete". WP:V allows for self-published sources for material on the author. Tyrenius 09:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I convinced myself of an alternative to "Keep" or "Delete" while composing my response and neglected to amend it before saving it ... but I'm confused by your comment about "self-published" because the subject of this AfD falls under Notability (web), not Notability (people) ... there is no "author" under discussion here. --Dennette 10:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Rafed.net is not dependent on Sistani, it is an independent website that cooperates with Sistani, per above given links.--Striver - talk 12:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete sources are apparently not independent. Walled garden. Guy (Help!) 09:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * In what way is Daniel Heradstveit (author), Joshua Teitelbaum (Israeli University researcher) and Joseph Braude (author)in the same "garden" as Rafed.net? I did not know that Israel and Iran were in the same "garden"... --Striver - talk 11:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep I think this is the third time I vote to save this article scince the last mounth. Keep it per Striver.--Sa.vakilian 17:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete no reliable sources -- Selmo  (talk) 21:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Could you please explain to me why Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is not reliable? And could you also explain why a RS is needed for establishing notability in WP:WEB?--Striver - talk 23:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Anyone can write about an NN website, which is why any web resources used to assert notability must pass WP:RS -- Selmo  (talk) 19:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You did not answer why Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is not reliable. --Striver - talk 23:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep per WB:WEB Brendan Alcorn 04:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC) &larr; See checkuser request on this user. Crossmr 23:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC) (UTC)


 * Weak Keep - Having carefully read through this AfD, the previous AfD and WP:WEB I don't think it passes WP:WEB, because this website has not been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself. The examples by Striver only mention the website in a single paragraph, and the website is definitely not the subject. But I am going to ignore WP:WEB here and vote weak keep on the basis that this website actually seems quite notable in the Arabic world, as demonstrated by the sources Striver provided. Alexa also confirms the popularity of this website. I am of course open to debate, and willing to change my vote if any good arguments are made. Jayden54 13:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think what you mean is that you are invoking WP:IAR. Sure, that works. I would really appreciate if you could inform me why the coverage of Joshua Teitelbaum and seestani.com is not considered independent by your standards. Thanks and peace.--Striver - talk 14:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Find Sourcesand keep, or otherwise delete. Alex43223Talk 07:52, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Is Joshua Teitelbaum's quote and Joseph Braude's book together with Sistanis full length review and the rest of the quoted material not enough? Would you please give me a detailed response on why each one of them fail? Thanks. --Striver - talk 10:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete. I don't think you can argue that the quotes in books are "non-trivial"; they give a passing mention to one of a number of sites they are describing. The Alexa and Google rankings are immaterial - as I've said before, popularity is not equal to notability. It's harder for me to judge the seestani.com review, but I'm worried by both its independence and reliability. You say that "close relations and being allies" isn't the same as dependence and that might be true, but it certainly does not encourage independence. You also say that reliability is not an issue (interestingly the primary notability criterion on WP:N recently had reliability added to it) but I can't agree with that. By that logic, if I reviewed a website and posted it to my personal blog or homepage, that would qualify as a source - clearly absurd. So I'm still going to support deletion. Trebor 13:33, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Bro, what i find it strange is that people demand notable sources, and when they get that from sistani, the top representative for Shi'a, then it somehow is not good enough. And when the sistani coverage is "too good", then it somehow does not count. Well, even if you consider that the page was owned by sistani, wich it is not, then that fact would make it notable. You seem my point? But in any case, the site is NOT dependant on sistani, and nobody has claimed it is. And by the way, if you wonder why some of those pages has poor layout, consider the state of IT-technology in some of those countries, for example, Iran only has pre-paid dial up internet, from what i have gathered. --Striver - talk 20:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not bothered about the poor layout, it's the relationship between the sites that worries me. It isn't black or white whether something is dependent or independent (in my opinion), it's more of a sliding scale, and being closely related would tend towards the former. Would the comments about the website be objective? Doubtful I think, they'd surely be influenced by the relationship and shared ideals. To clarify, I don't think this deletion is clear-cut one way or the other, and you've done an excellent job arguing the case for keeping it. I still feel, though, that the articles will have length and sourcing issues, and will tend towards merely a directory entry. This looks like it'll end as "no consensus" anyway, so it probably won't matter. Trebor 20:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete No references of notabity and horribly written.--Sefringle 07:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. I dont know why there is so much eagerness to delete a page that can serve as a gateway to much needed information about Islam. This information is badly needed, considering the current state of affairs. If the article has problems, well then fix it! Dont delete it.--Zereshk 19:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment (negative): And just where did you get the impression that Wikipedia has either a role or a responsibility to "serve as a gateway to much needed information about Islam" or anyother subject, for that matter? Leave the missionary work to Some Other Website ... Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links and this article has no "information content" beyond being just a "gateway" to the subject's website, whose only claims to WP:Notability are (a) its "popularity" relative to other Shi'a websites based on its PageRank, (b) being a vehicle for the ideology of a well-know Muslim scholar, and (c) having been "banned in Saudi Arabia" like thousands of other websites including AltaVista and Amnesty International ... I mean, the fact that the Saudis have recently banned the sale of cats and dogs is far more notable than this website being banned. --72.75.85.159 23:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Please spare us the antipathy. At least muslims dont eat the poor creatures like some other people do. And I got "the impression" from Wikipedia's stated definition of being an encyclopedia: "a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge." If providing knowledge to readers about a topic which we're fighting a fucking war at does not qualify as knowledge, then I dont know what does. Anyhow, I added in some information to the article. Hopefully that will help straighten things up a bit.--Zereshk 04:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, Muslims just put people in prison for having them as pets. (Talk about distracting from the debate by going off-topic!) ... So, are you implying that this primarily non-English language website from a country in which no American troops are stationed is somehow providing useful "knowledge" related to the War on Terrorism? (Or is the United States at war with Islam in general, regardless of country?) Because this article sure doesn't tell me anything, and I don't read Arabic, so why have you been adding references in violation of WP:EL instead of creating this article on the Arabic language Wiki? (BTW, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?) --72.75.85.159 05:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The additions are not in violation of WP:EL, he just did not add the Arabic tag.--Striver - talk 10:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Adding in the site a few more times as a primary reference doesn't change anything. Neither does the fact we're fighting a war, or the fact that people eat cats or the fact you can swear. Try to construct real arguments. Trebor 07:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * His argument is clearly that the site is notable, and added facts to that effect in the article. for example the fact that the site is from a notable Iraninan institute. i was waiting for this kind of information to show up when an Arabic reader would investigate the material, and it did. More third part coverage are in this afd and remain to be added to the article. --Striver - talk 10:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment A reminder of CIVIL is in order here, and Manual of Style - Foreign language sites would be useful too. Tyrenius 06:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment the article should be renamed to "Rafed Network for Cultural Development", considering that that is the name of the organization behind the site. --Striver - talk 10:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I would like again to point out that Faith Freedom International is far less notable and after undergoing the last and recent afd it has been established that the article is to be keept on wikipedia. --Striver - talk 15:20, 9 January 2007 (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.