Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/World News (WN) Network


 * 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, defaulted to keep.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:11, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

World News (WN) Network

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Non-notable website. The only significant independent coverage I was able to find was the Search Engine Watch article already cited, and being from 2003, it isn't very useful for describing the website as it is today. wctaiwan (talk) 19:16, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 20:14, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 20:14, 19 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete In the past may have been a legit news source, but currently exists solely to generate pageclicks, screw up web search results through SEO and contains no original content of its own.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 21:20, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Poor quality is not grounds for deletion. See WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Pburka (talk) 21:59, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I didn't say they had poor quality content, but that they had little to none; they exist mainly to compile RSS feeds together to misdirect web searches towards them.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 23:55, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * You missed my point. The content (or lack thereof) is irrelevant. That's not how we judge notability for this effort. Pburka (talk) 03:07, 21 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete per nomm BlueSalix (talk) 22:10, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. - →Davey 2010→ →Talk to me!→  23:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: WNN consists of more than wn.com, which you wouldn't get from the current terrible article. They also run oil.com, broadcasting.com, filmnews.com, economicnews.com, many other industry-specific sites, and locality-specific sites like riodejenaro.com. Pretty consistently low-quality sites, as has been mentioned, oriented toward click revenue and search engine optimization. They have a lot of non-significant coverage, are cited in many references (including magazines and a dozen or two books), and included in many resource lists (e.g. some libraries, including the Library of Congress) and I'd say at least a dozen books, for example:
 * However, none of this is not notable coverage about the company in itself. I do think the quality of the site should be irrelevant, as should its deterioration relative to competitors (e.g., it preceded Google News, which blows it away); if it was notable in 2000, I'd consider it still historically notable. However, it's not clear that it was notable in 2000, according to either WP:GNG or WP:WEBSITE. ––Agyle (talk) 00:23, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Update: Forbes listed it as one of its four "best of the web" international news sites in 2000. Not a major award, but it seems to have been included in a number of high profile "short lists" of news sources in the 2000s, which by themselves fall short of WP:WEBSITE notability, but are a bit more than trivial. I'd also estimate that citations referencing articles on wn.com appear in several dozen books, and 100 academic journal articles and other papers (search scholar.google.com for "article.wn.com" and look at about 300 links to manually filter out the non-academic PDFs etc.), and while the citations in all likelihood should have referenced the original sources, the fact that so many independent, reputable sources do in fact reference wn.com, though admittedly incidentally, distinguishes this from most aggregation sites. ––Agyle (talk) 05:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * However, none of this is not notable coverage about the company in itself. I do think the quality of the site should be irrelevant, as should its deterioration relative to competitors (e.g., it preceded Google News, which blows it away); if it was notable in 2000, I'd consider it still historically notable. However, it's not clear that it was notable in 2000, according to either WP:GNG or WP:WEBSITE. ––Agyle (talk) 00:23, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Update: Forbes listed it as one of its four "best of the web" international news sites in 2000. Not a major award, but it seems to have been included in a number of high profile "short lists" of news sources in the 2000s, which by themselves fall short of WP:WEBSITE notability, but are a bit more than trivial. I'd also estimate that citations referencing articles on wn.com appear in several dozen books, and 100 academic journal articles and other papers (search scholar.google.com for "article.wn.com" and look at about 300 links to manually filter out the non-academic PDFs etc.), and while the citations in all likelihood should have referenced the original sources, the fact that so many independent, reputable sources do in fact reference wn.com, though admittedly incidentally, distinguishes this from most aggregation sites. ––Agyle (talk) 05:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Update: Forbes listed it as one of its four "best of the web" international news sites in 2000. Not a major award, but it seems to have been included in a number of high profile "short lists" of news sources in the 2000s, which by themselves fall short of WP:WEBSITE notability, but are a bit more than trivial. I'd also estimate that citations referencing articles on wn.com appear in several dozen books, and 100 academic journal articles and other papers (search scholar.google.com for "article.wn.com" and look at about 300 links to manually filter out the non-academic PDFs etc.), and while the citations in all likelihood should have referenced the original sources, the fact that so many independent, reputable sources do in fact reference wn.com, though admittedly incidentally, distinguishes this from most aggregation sites. ––Agyle (talk) 05:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep The Forbes article seems to establish notability. It was also referenced in this article from Information Today: . Because of the 11-year span between the two mentions, this does not appear to be a brief moment of fame… (on the other hand maybe such a long time between means that it's not worth an article!) But still, I think that Forbes especially says Keep. (My 2¢.) Goldenshimmer (talk) 06:24, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Another thought, it should be moved to World News Network. Goldenshimmer (talk) 07:00, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it's debatable whether Information Today satisfies our standards for reliable sources. wctaiwan (talk) 14:22, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * wctaiwan, yeah, not sure about that one either. I think Forbes is fair game though, and probably The Guardian too…. (Also, not really relevant to anything but it seems that there is some original news that is posted, attributed to Dallas Darling and collected at, so I guess it's not only an aggregator.) Goldenshimmer (talk) 00:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment I think we don't have (and would likely not have) sufficient sources to create an article that adequately describes the current website in a manner that satisfies WP:V. At best we'd have a stub with a couple of sentences listing each of the mentions people have found, and personally I don't find that beneficial. wctaiwan (talk) 14:22, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Why do we need to describe the current website? Describing it as it was in 2000 is sufficient. Notability is WP:NOTTEMPORARY, and WP:ITSNOTUSEFUL is not a reason to delete. Pburka (talk) 14:33, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * WP:ITSNOTUSEFUL specifically advises against arguing about usefulness without a rationale. To spell it out, it's not beneficial because the end product would look like "World News Network is an online news aggregator. In 2000, Forbes named it in its Best of the Web awards.[ref] In 2003, The Guardian listed it in...[ref] It was included in [book]..." A reader gains no meaningful understanding of the subject from such an article--it would just be a list of assertions of (borderline) notability. Enough to keep it from being deleted, maybe, but of no benefit to the reader. wctaiwan (talk) 14:50, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to argue usefulness is sufficient, but since you're suggesting it's not useful, I do find even brief stub articles like that useful when ascertaining the reliability of sources. Wn.com turns up in hundreds of bibliographies, and other WNN sites (cities.com, filmnews.com, dubai.com, etc.) combined probably turn up even more than that. Learning those citations were to a news aggregator rather than an original news source could be all I'd want to know. Similar to relatively un-notable book publishers...even pay-to-print vanity press publications get mentioned in more reliable sources, and knowing it's pay-to-print is usually all I want to know about such companies. ––Agyle (talk) 21:43, 21 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. User:Agyle makes an interesting point regarding reliable sources. I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that we should lean towards keeping articles about potential sources to Wikipedia. Although the notability (as shown by coverage in reliable sources) is marginal for this article, editors are likely to want to refer to the article to determine the reliability of the subject as a source. Pburka (talk) 02:54, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep WP is an encyclopediza, not a directory, and that means we cover not just what is important in the present, but what ever has been earlier. And as pointed out, the current article needs considerable expansion. Something rated as particularly important by a discriminating source meets the requirements for notability,
 * I also agree with Agyle's argument about including articles very generously on publishers, news sources, and the like." It's useful" in the context of the world in general is not a reason to keep; but it's useful in the context of reading WP is certainly a reason to keep in WP. &#39;DGG (at NYPL)&#39; (talk) 20:24, 27 January 2014 (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.