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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. Ad Orientem (talk) 00:37, 8 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Brosix Instant Messenger

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AfDs for this article:
Brosix (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Brosix Instant Messenger (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Previously deleted here and here. Article is obviously promotional; references in the article aren't reliable/significant; don't see evidence of notability via WP:GNG or WP:NCORP. GirthSummit (blether) 22:07, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. It is promotional, and the sources (to borrow the plain speaking of a nominator at another Afd) are appalling. There could perhaps be an actual encyclopedia article in this subject's future, but this isn't it. – Athaenara ✉ 22:23, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy delete it's spam and has already been afd'd 3 times and nothing has changed. Praxidicae (talk) 22:33, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • There's no reason why all the other Instant Messenger tools around have their own page, including minor ones no one cares about and others that are much more blatantly promotional, while Brosix cannot. It seems more like someone really doesn't want this page to exist for unknown reasons. By the way, I don't even know how the other pages were made in the first place, but much of the arguments in favor of deleting have now been addressed. The page has several notable sources and reviews (such as one from PCMag - which even gave a negative review which I cited for the sake of neutrality), The Next Web, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and there's nothing really promotional here. The other pages have been deleted ages ago before all these reviews were published. --Daimyo2 (talk) 22:59, 31 January 2019‎ (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I tried to keep it as neutral as possible by showing all the negative aspects that emerged from the most authoritative reviews out there. I made sure that every single source was authoritative this time, and that the assertion of notability was significant enough to justify a page. I checked a lot of reviews around the web, I found that the software is used by some pretty important organizations (such as the Harvard University), and I tried to stay as neutral as possible. I did all I can to provide a balanced overview of this tool, I really can't understand why it should be flagged as "promotional". I mean, if there's something that looks like it's promotional, please, let's work on it and let's revise it. --Daimyo2 (talk) 22:59, 31 January 2019‎ (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 23:18, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just to give a bit more detail on my thinking with regard to the sources. Some of them give quite trivial coverage - Business2Community, NextWeb, Tech Times, Entepreneur and Business.com just have a few sentences in '5 ways to...' type articles - not enough coverage for CORPDEPTH. Alterative to and Slant are UGC, so not reliable (and the Alternative to piece was written by Brosix!). The Forbes piece isn't even about Brosix - it just contains a short quote from the CEO. CIO Review is a company profile, largely written by the CEO - it's not independent. CEO World is an interview with the CEO - we can't use his own words to support assertions about his company, that's not independent. Socialnomics is described on the page as a 'promoted post' - an advertorial, so not independent. I could go on, but basically I think that the closest thing to a reliable, independent source giving decent depth is the PC Mag review; that alone isn't enough to establish notability.
As for the language, I'll let other editors judge, but it looks very promotional to me. GirthSummit (blether) 07:36, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, let's address the issues one at a time. About the sources, I understand some of them are not full reviews, but if the tool (or the CEO) have been featured by so many significant magazines over the course of the last two years, IMHO the product has the right to be mentioned among its competitors. I do totally agree that most of these reviews will probably come from PR jobs, but they're so many, that it is out of question that the product already left a footprint. This IMHO is sufficient to earn Brosix a page on its own, especially considering that this underdog still survives since 2006 - that's 13 years, it's notable enough in my agenda according to WP:SUSTAINED. Also, I mentioned the fact that is being currently used by some really large companies and governmental agencies as well as important universities. Isn't this enough to assert its notability and meet WP:NSOFT?
Moving to the language issue. I can't see where the language may look promotional, but I'm more than willing to change it if you or the other editors feel it looks "advertisey". I simply followed the template of other IM tools such as Wickr and Tox_(protocol). Seriously, I don't care about promoting this tool at all, so if you think there's some part that needs to be revised, please just point that out, and I'll be happy to work on it. A possible approach could be to highlight the fact that Brosix really is an underdog, and always has been. It survived so far, but it never shined because it just doesn't offer anything that makes it stand out from competition. I can't find anything else more "neutral" than this other than just bashing it (which I guess it's not fair for the opposite reason). Daimyo2 (talk) 12:09, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you knew that most of the reviews came from PR jobs, why bother including them at all? They are not independent, and aren't suitable sources for an entry here. The fact that there are lots of them doesn't change that at all. It's not a question of fairness - no subject has a 'right' to an article - it's a question of whether or not we can write a quality article with the sources that are available. If we can't, we don't write the article.
I don't see how WP:SUSTAINED applies - that raises the bar for notability, it doesn't drop it. It says that a subject needs sustained coverage in reliable sources over a period of time (as opposed to hitting the headlines for a day and then disappearing). There's nothing there to imply that sustained trivial coverage equates to significant coverage.
WP:NSOFT says an app that is distributed commercially or supported by businesses is a commercial product. Sources used for such apps should satisfy the breadth and depth of coverage required for a standalone commercial product article, and gives a link to WP:NCORP. Brosix is distributed commercially, so it's clear that NCORP guidelines apply. You can read the guidance there for yourself, but right upfront it says No matter how "important" editors may personally believe an organization to be, it should not have a stand-alone article in Wikipedia unless reliable sources independent of the organization have discussed it. We need significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable, secondary sources, or we have nothing to build an article around. Only one of the sources currently in the article appears to be usable; if better ones could be found, a better article could be written, but we need the sources first. GirthSummit (blether) 12:50, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Daimyo2: I personally think it should have been speedy deleted as promotional. The troubling aspects to me are some of the language (e.g. The service is designed to allow streamlined inter-office communication without the risk of being hacked or losing sensitive information as a result of leaks. and One of the oldest Instant Messengers available, Brosix is currently used by several global corporations, private universities, and public governmental organizations such as Xerox, Harvard University, Georgia Department of Community Health, and many more, the weight given to product features (which includes the security section) relative to other kinds of information (e.g. reviews, objective history) and the inclusion of information generally thought trivial (funding rounds). Fixing all this would require a substantial reworking of the article in my opinion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:20, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Barkeep49: Hi Barkeep. About the part The service is designed to allow streamlined inter-office communication without the risk of being hacked or losing sensitive information as a result of leaks. I can easily fix it to make it sound less commercial. I'll have a look into it immediately. The sentence One of the oldest Instant Messengers available, Brosix is currently used by several global corporations, private universities, and public governmental organizations such as Xerox, Harvard University, Georgia Department of Community Health, and many more has been purposefully added to assert its notability and meet WP:NSOFT - something that so far nobody wanted to take into account even if it seems very important to me. Stating why this tool may have had some form of significance is a requirement, this is not a sentence slapped there to say "it's a great product".
The weight given to product features and the funding part was included to copy the format used for similar products in this same niche. All messengers are really similar to each other, what makes this one a little bit different from the others is that Brosix is more secure. Else, it's a product with an outdated interface - as I clearly explained in the features section. The reviews that I included are a negative one and a good one. I can remove the good one, but wasn't the purpose of the articles to show some form of neutrality? Daimyo2 (talk) 16:33, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just to bring it back to the sources again, the assertion mentioned above that 'Brosix is currently used by...' is sourced to a listicle in Tech Times. The source is so breathlessly puffy that I can't believe it's not a paid feature; and even then, it only partially supports the assertion. First, it only mentions the three named organisations (nothing about 'several global corporations including...'); I'm also troubled by equating 'trusted by' with 'used by'. 'Trusted by' could mean that it's an integral part of their operations, but it could just as easily mean that it's not outright banned for staff to use it, or even that they trialed it once and gave positive feedback, but no longer actually use it. PR folk are pretty good at turning very little into something impressive without actually lying - that's why we shouldn't use sources like this.GirthSummit (blether) 17:10, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, I found the information on their website, here: https://www.brosix.com/customers/ but as you can easily imagine, I thought it wasn't a great idea to use this list as a primary source. Truth to be told, it seems they work with a bunch of pretty big shots - just look at the gov agencies and non-profit organizations in that list. Problem is, I can't find any source mentioning this anywhere. Daimyo2 (talk) 17:13, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Daimyo2, If reliable sources don't mention it then we shouldn't be using it. You are of course welcome to include positive reviews - assuming they come from reliable sources (which I think Girth demonstrated that was not). As for the other articles, Wikipedia has evolved to hold companies and products to a tighter standard. I would be unsurprised if other articles in this space are also not meeting our standard. However, in an AfD discussion, we judge each article against the standard and policy as opposed to comparing them to other articles. Hope that makes sense. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:23, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I edited the article to the best of my possibilities. I removed the positive review since it didn't come from a reliable source, deleted any "extra" info such as funding, changed everything you indicated as potentially promotional in the introduction. I don't know what to do about the sentence about the companies they work with though, since it still seems important to meet WP:NSOFT. I understand that it comes from a source that may have been paid by a PR agency, as Girth Summit correctly pointed out, but since I've looked at their website and they apparently work with over a dozen of significant organizations (such as universities, corporations and gov agencies), I think it's still fair to leave it here. They're not lying about that, that's pretty obvious. Let me know what you think, I suppose we can fix the text to describe this product for what it really is - i.e. a somewhat less important yes never-dying underdog IM that survived for 13 years notwithstanding its fierce competition. Daimyo2 (talk) 17:44, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A list of customers on their website does not help it pass WP:NSOFT or WP:NCORP. In my previous career, I used to maintain a very similar list of customers on my company's website. I can assure you that we added companies to the list no matter how small an order we got from them; we did not remove them, however, if they switched to a competitor, unless they explicitly asked us to (which, AFAICR, nobody ever did). We simply can't rely on sources like this to establish notability, or even to support assertions of this nature. GirthSummit (blether) 19:01, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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