Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zorpia (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. Agree with Ryulong, however, that the large amounts of unsourced "warnings" and user-guide should stay out unless verifiable, independent, reliable sources are found (currently, I have found Zero in a rudimentary search Keeper  |  76  01:30, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Zorpia
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

This article was deleted at AFD 6 years ago, and in the past 3 months it was recreated after a WP:AFC entry. After stumbling across this entity on another website, I looked at the article and it is clear that this service is not notable according to WP:WEB or WP:GNG. All of the sources in the article are were either directly to the website, complaints on blogs and forums of the website's alleged practices, or Alexa ranking data. The only other reference is something regarding the creator's intent, but the link is dead.

Once again, this article in no way shows that it is notable for inclusion. This website is barely notable for its notoriety and has zero web presence outside of people who were duped into joining it. — Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 15:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Uh-uh. If it's notorious, it's widely known (see dictionary.reference.com/browse/notorious). That means it doesn't have zero web presence. I just got spammed by Zorpia, and my friend's contacts are now compromised, so I'm one of the validators of its web presence. If Zorpia hadn't been on wiki, I would never have known what it was until, tautologically as Ryulong is, I signed up. Keep it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Migemet (talk • contribs) 08:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Please do not delete this page, unless, of course, it is false information. There are many of us who take this information into consideration before joining Zorpia. I have been invited to join Zorpia by family members I trust who say they did not send the invitation, and know nothing about Zorpia.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Je1942 (talk • contribs) 15:57, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * — Je1942 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. 04:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia should not keep a page up just because it needs to be used as a warning for other people.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 04:44, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * keep zorpia is notable and notorious. Yes it needs better references Bhny (talk) 23:21, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Just because it's notorious doesn't mean it's notable. Unless you can find reliable sources that show anything in the page is true then the page should be deleted, as it was 6 years ago.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 04:43, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
 * — Migemet (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. 04:38, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter if you got spammed by it. There's no notability for this web entity. The only thing out there is press releases and people complaining exactly about what you are complaining about.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 04:36, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment: Here are a few news articles covering it:

There were a couple of other pieces but they appeared to just be press releases. As a side note, Zorpia users apparently are angry that the article was previously deleted. (Not that it matters to the AfD process; I just thought it was funny.) --Atlantima (talk) 00:13, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Friend-Finding Social Network Zorpia Is No Facebook, But At Least It Has Friends In China
 * Reinvigorating the social networking experience with Zorpia
 * Zorpia Resurfaces Social Media Landscape
 * I don't know if any of those are reliable sources.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 04:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * PandoDaily seems reliable to me. The author of the DigitalJournal piece, Andrew Moran, is an experienced journalist. Vatalyst is the one I'm least sure of the reliability on.--Atlantima (talk) 15:50, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Ryulong- It's not a good idea to delete most of the article that you have nominated for deletion while the discussion is still taking place. Bhny (talk) 04:59, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I removed all statements from the article that were only sourced to various forums and blogs complaining about the subject which are not allowed under WP:RS.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 06:50, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * no I disagree. there's nothing left worth saving. You removed all the helpful stuff. the remaining material seems to be from PR releases. I undid your edit Bhny (talk) 13:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * All of the "helpful stuff" you refer to is not reliably sourced and therefore not allowed on Wikipedia. In addition, the English Wikipedia is most definitely not a user's guide to the Internet so people do not accidentally send a mass email to everybody on their contact list just because of some stupid website that is patently not notable. There is no reason to have such a large amount of content dedicated as just some red flag to people who might have received one of these emails. We do not warn people about every website that's less than stellar. Do not undo the edit, again. I've left the content I deleted, but I have since removed every single source that is to some forum or blog posting about the website that was just used to say "I logged into Zorpia and sent everyone in my contact list spam". Outside of its completely unpublished notoriety for sending out emails, there is nothing to say that Zorpia does anything but exist. The only tenuous claim to notability it may have is its strong web presence in India and China, but even if the article is kept for those reasons and those reasons alone, that means that everything about the "spam" nature will have to be permanently removed unless some proper website discusses it. As of right now, those are the only claims to fame.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 15:32, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * By "bad faith" I meant that your edit seemed to deliberately make the article a useless PR piece so it would be deleted. You were using your edit to push your case that should have been discussed here. So far you are the only editor that thinks the page should be deleted. Not that you don't have a case, but obviously there is no consensus for deletion Bhny (talk) 15:57, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be a useless PR piece if you hadn't transformed it from a neutral article about the website into some anti-Zorpia essay in the past 3 months (likely because you were subject to the site's bad practices). While I'm the only editor that is currently saying the page should be deleted, it seems I'm the only one with the experience and knowledge of what is and is not acceptable on Wikipedia to make the determination that it should not be kept.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 16:01, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment: The site's name in Chinese is 若比鄰. Perhaps a user who knows Chinese can see whether the site is notably covered by Chinese sources?--Atlantima (talk) 16:51, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I assume you know this because you checked zh.wiki. I might concede that the site is notable simply for its high presence in China and India, but all the "THIS SITE WILL USE YOUR EMAIL TO SPAM PEOPLE" garbage needs to go because it cannot be reliably sourced.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 19:03, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not trying to claim that it's notable, and I'm not arguing to keep the article or the "garbage" in it. I'm just commenting that there may be RS covering it in other languages. Please don't reply so harshly.--Atlantima (talk) 15:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I was merely remarking on the nature of the article. If there are reliable sources that is fine. I just doubt it.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 15:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I do not see that there would be any discussion here.
 * First, Ryulong, my opition is it was not proper of you to remove sourced informations based on your opinion. If you read the mentioned policies (and don't act wikilawyer but read the intent) then you'll see that "source reliability" does not inherently exclude community articles, blog entries, webpages and other sources (especially not in a topic about a webpage and a spamming operation). These are excluded only in sensitive areas (like BLP) but not everywhere else. In this case the web notability guideline explicitely mentions that the sources should not be extremist, should be independent, and should contain the information referenced: I guess most of the sources you have removed satisfied these criteria ("reliable sources", "independent sources", "on topic sources"). (Yet to see your proof of any of them being stating false information, which would be the ultimate sign of an unreliable source.) The amount of not interdependant sources shall have established the fact that the service indeed well known and referenced (which could be deducted by simple searches either), which is another criteria for notability ("significant coverage"). So here we have covered all the aspects mentioned in General notability guidelines.
 * Apart from notability there may be a problem of the article not being encyclopedic enough, this may be right, and could be corrected. It would be an interesting project to go through the sources to establish the history of this semicriminal organisation, and would be useful from chinese fellow editors to contribute to the article, possibly about the background of how such a scam may operate legally. The article already contains information about the operation of this organisation. Still, notability does not mean there must be abundance of informations about a subject, and it should not be a deletion criteria by itself.
 * As far as I see there is Ryulong who wants to delete the article, Bhny who wants to have an antispam guide, and the rest of the world of which half probably uninterested and the other half would appreciate the information. :-) I agree with the removal of "howto" information (I wanted to remove it myself, too) but would appreciate the reinstallment of the sources (instead of me doing a simple revert).
 * All that said, I'm for strong keep since I see no justification for deletion; the article is not in good shape but not hopeless either. --grin ✎ 17:25, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Grin, for someone who has been on this project so long I am surprised that you are forgetting that what goes on Wikipedia does not have to be true or false. It simply must be verified by reliable sources. As it stands the dozen or so blog posts and forum posts that were previously used in the article to cite the various alleged wrongdoings of Zorpia don't cut it, and they are also being used to violate the rule that Wikipedia is not an Internet guide and the article is most definitely not written from a neutral point of view. So throwing all those out means that all we're left is the small number of press-releasy pieces that just show that Zorpia exists, but that it is not notable. I mean, how can you honestly state that "icfun.blogspot.com", "productforums.google.com", "answers.yahoo.com", "www.mywot.com", "www.webutation.net", "www.baiterbase.co.uk", or "bot24.blogspot.hu" could possibly be considered to be reliable sources?— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 19:03, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * As I told on my talk page in case of webpages you cannot expect scientific journal articles, and the lack of peer review does not automagically qualify a source "unreliable". People who detail the details of the Zorpia oparation in masses, in my humble and not always correct opinion establish widespread knowledge of the site as well as they happen to say all the same which kind of suggest reliability of the information. --grin ✎ 11:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry but a post on someone's blog or a post on some forum that corroborate the same evidence does not make either a reliable source by any sense of the word, and we should not treat Zorpia as special just because we need to have the page as a warning.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 11:11, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * And despite Bhny's vociferous opposal, it is fully within my right as an editor to remove content that is not reliably sourced. And Grin mentions that WP:BLP isn't involved here. Last I checked Jeffrey Ng is a living individual and it is his product that we are saying is a spam service and "semi-criminal organization" so any poorly referenced or unreferenced material has to go.— Ryulong ( 琉竜 ) 11:26, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll agree with Ryulong on this one. The article was entirely negative in tone, and the references didn't justify such treatment. Without coverage from any "notable" source, you are bound to include only a paragraph somewhere. Try obtaining statements from notable bloggers and from notable spam fighters. Also, many sources were not good at all: websites like www.webutation.net don't have quality controls to ensure that the information is accurate and factual. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I said months ago that this article didn't pass WP:WEBCRIT. But the links provided by Atlantima are good, and the second says that The social network has gained a tremendous amount of media attention. One of its largest profiles was completed by China Daily, the biggest English newspaper in China. The Zorpia founder also appeared on Luyu, a television talk show that is considered the counterpart to Oprah Winfrey in China." The profile is scanned here at zorpia.com.
 * If you look at Systemic bias you will see that wikipedia has a bias towards certain topics. I think this would be an excellent opportunity to counter that bias. I don't oppose keeping this article. But please try to keep it neutral --Enric Naval (talk) 19:44, 12 March 2013 (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.