Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shadowban


 * 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. While the keep votes were very passioned, in the end the delete votes were more in line with Wikipedia policy. &mdash; O cat ecir  Talk  04:01, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Shadowban

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

A neologism that has arisen out of bans imposed on Fark.com users who have then migrated to a spin off site to vent their frustration Steve (Stephen)talk 02:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

This article provides factual, verifiable evidence of activities on Fark.com and should not be considered for deletion. Marking this article for deletion should be considered vandalism and is being reported as such.Faethe 02:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The preceding statement is wrong, just in case any newbies are reading. Please ignore it- marking articles for deeltion is not vandalism. Attempting to stop deletion nominations by false claims of vandalism, on the other hand, is reprehensible behaviour Lurker  11:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep The practice may be in place elsewhere; it's very difficult to detect without going out of your way to do so.  More examples of other websites that employ the method should of course be encouraged when discovered.  Removing the article just looks like another attempt to keep the subject hidden, particularly when submitted by someone who also decided to gut the Fark article of long-standing, useful, and directly user-verifiable information rather than allow any reference to a particular competing website to stand. Atario 02:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Just a note, but it appears the removals from Fark were for the same reason this is being nominated for deletion - namely, verifiability concerns. And your link doesn't work. --Haemo 02:25, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Oops, sorry. Link now fixed. Atario 02:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete - I can't see any reliable sources for this; so, delete unless properly sourced. The standard of Wikipedia is not truth but verifiability.  In addition, nominating an article for deletion is not vandalism. --Haemo 02:22, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Is the idea that nothing should be on Wikipedia unless and until an exposé has been written about it in Time magazine? You'll have to delete half the content of the place if that's anywhere near the intent... Atario 02:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * No - it only has to be covered by reliable sources. Content which is not attributable to such sources should be deleted, per guidelines.  --Haemo 03:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Me thinks Steven is also a moderator on Fark.com. A little disingenuous... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarrant84 (talk • contribs) 02:25, 7 June 2007
 * No, I'm not. Used to be a top 40 submitter, ~170 links or so, but that's long since been superseded, and I rarely visit nowadays. I'm just interested in seeing material added here be notable and verifiable. --Steve (Stephen)talk 03:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * And yet you didn't see fit to gut the Filters section of the Fark article till a certain filter was mentioned. Interesting.  Atario 06:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep If user submitted material, screenshots and testimonials are not sufficient evidence for a wikipedia entry, then most of what is contained in the original fark.com article should be deleted. In addition I would like to state that this article has been the subject of repeated vandalism. If some of the links are missing, it is because they were deleted and the original poster has not been contacted. Shadowbanning very well could be a practice going on in other communities as I find it hard to believe this is original. This article helps to promote knowledge of this practice so users of other large sites may have some frame of reference if the same thing is done to them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Faethe (talk • contribs) 04:14, 7 June 2007
 * Which !vote do you wish to strike? This one or the one above? --Steve (Stephen)talk 04:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I do not believe that she made a vote above... AleBrewer 00:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete per OP. Non-notable, not reliably sourced, and a neologism to boot. The only saving grace to this article is that someone will probably submit a FARK headline about its deletion. -- Kesh 05:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * They wouldn't dare, if they wished to stay on Fark — they would be immediately met with action against them: probably a shadowban. Atario 06:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong delete per above and nom. A little context for those uninvolved with the issue: Fark.com redesigned their website in late April of this year without consulting with their userbase or even prior announcement, which was a bit unusual. There was some uproar among its users, many claimed they had canceled their paid subscriptions and some users started a spin-off site. Almost since back then, members of that site have tried to get that site's domainname into the main Fark article which has lead to an extended edit war (please check the article's history), full page protection, semi-protection less than 24 hours after it was unprotected and an extended discussion on the Fark.com talk page. Yesterday, there was even a thread on their site specifically announcing that the article was good to be edited by unregistered users again.

This article is another, albeit somewhat clever, attempt at getting the domain name into the article. I strongly assume that this not so much out of a genuine desire to write an article about 'Shadowbanning' but the result of the realization that adding the domainname to the article by itself, as part of major sites like reddit and digg, as part of that article's 'Filters' section (all of which can be easily verified by checking the history) and now as  a separate 'criticism' section will quickly result in a revert. Fact is, It's still a non-notable website and the article still lacks reliable sources for a very simple reason: there are none. The screen shots are WP:OR and this has been explained in detail by multiple users, myself included, again and again. (FD: I wasn't involved in the edit war in any way, shape or form but I am keeping an eye on the article since I requested its unprotection after about a month of full protection.) This attempt at self-promotion has taken up way too much time already that could have been spent doing something productive. Hence, my !vote. -- Seed 2.0 06:34, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The motivation behind any contribution is irrelevant.
 * Discussions about Wikipedia taking place outside Wikipedia are irrelevant.
 * The filter was just as legitimate and correct to present as any of the others were, and in any case, is also irrelevant to this decision.
 * The evidence on the linked site is outside Wikipedia and therefore cannot be considered original research by Wikipedia.
 * Atario 07:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, whatever they are, they aren't reliable sources, and contrary to your opinion I believe that the context of this discussion is quite important; thank you Seed! --Haemo 07:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete NN neologism Lurker  11:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete Internet forum peeing matches aren't notable. Wildthing61476 13:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletions.   -- John Vandenberg 17:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete as per WP:NEO - and reflect Wildthing61476's comment; this does look like nothing more than an attempt to throw fuel on this particular group's fire with Fark. Tony Fox (arf!) 19:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Someone else's forum drama. DarkAudit 21:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep This seems to be nominated for deletion just out of Steve's own personal agenda. Frankly, I think that this article could use some (read: a lot) of work and editing, but so is the case with new articles. Steve, who seems happy to announce that he was once a top 40 submitter to Fark has done very little, in my opinion, to hide his bias.AleBrewer 21:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * What bias are you talking about? I don't understand.  --Haemo 21:34, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * As a former top 40 submitter he obviously holds interest in this - His discussion on the Fark.com History page is quite telling - "trivial spin off site," the removal of selected non-referenced material which was critical of the subject.  Note, that the majority of the actual Fark.com article is barely sourced at all.  Rather than attempt to find sources, he seems quite content to delete that which is critical and leave everything else that lacks a source intact.  Now this new article comes along and it could use some good sources, rather than attempting to go through channels to fix that problem, he nominates the article for deletion three days after it is created.  An action which is keeping with his mission to delete what he, personally, doesn't like.  Sorry, but to me, his bias is showing. AleBrewer 21:59, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The onus is not on people voting for deletion to find phantom sources. I looked, too, and it does not appear that any reliable sources exist.  If you wish to keep this article, you could change a lot of people's minds by finding some - rather than accusing people of having a secret agenda because they see fit to delete unsourced, self-promotional, material.  --Haemo
 * I edited the page to reflect more sources. 'Shadowbanning' is similar to 'Global ignore' which is a well established feature of vBulletin. The difference in this case is that first, fark is not run off a vBulletin package, and second, paying users are havng this done to them without their knowlege.Faethe 04:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good start, but the real problem is that they're not reliable sources, which is really what's required here - oh, and an article should never cite Wikipedia in it, especially on Wikipedia. --Haemo 05:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, this is a community effort to expose this and this was the work of the community today :) An article is being comprised at p2pnet.net about this, so hopefully we shall have more involvement from the web at large who can provide more information. I had a feeling I screwed up a bit by quoting back to wikipedia :( I haven't done this before, so if someone wants to go and polish it up a bit it would be most appreciated. Thank you :)
 * Also, I would like to point out the existence of the WikiProject Internet culture. It would appear to be inclusive of things like this under the heading of website moderation tactics.Faethe 06:24, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Secret agenda? I just pointed out someone's bias; hardly a secret.  If you believe that the article should not point to the bannination website, then that is a valid argument.AleBrewer 00:23, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep The term shadowban,after having done a simple google search here and here here thus clearly it has been a term in use on various internet forums for some time. Frankly I don't care if it references bannination.com on the page, but the terminology does exist and seems to have been in use since 2005 according to that very same google search.  To so quickly request for deletion, I find overzealous. --Reed Solomon 23:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Internet forums are not reliable sources. Existence does not merit a Wikipedia article, we have to be able to verify its use through those reliable sources. Thus, this is not a valid reason to keep the article. -- Kesh 01:43, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong keep This article documents a common mechanism for moderating community sites. If this isn't part of 'Internet Culture' then what is? --Bokononist 18:24, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, please cite reliable sources to back it up. -- Kesh 01:04, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * keep Wikipedia has every bit as much systemic bias against internet culture topics as it has against anything, and this AFD is just one example. --Random832 22:58, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not an entity, it's a database. If you are claiming the community has bias, I'd suggest you read more Talk pages. There's too many people here to have a singular bias in that regard. Further, you haven't actually pointed out a policy reason to keep the article. I like it is not a valid argument. -- Kesh 01:04, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete This neologism article with no non-trivial sources should Fark off. ŞůṜīΣĻ ¹98¹ Speak 12:07, 10 June 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.