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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of wiki farms (3rd nomination)

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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 keep. MBisanz talk 03:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison of wiki farms

[edit]
AfDs for this article:
Comparison of wiki farms (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This is an article which compares features drawn directly in the main from primary sources to create a novel comparison of wiki farms, most of which do not (and will never) have entries due to isses with notability. It's not a navigaitonal list or category, it's a reviewer's guide, something outwith the remit of Wikipedia, being a kind of "howto". Guy (Help!) 21:56, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep and perhaps change the name to "List of wiki farms". I am going to treat this article as a standalone list, and as so it covers a notable subject, is fairly well-sourced, provides information in the form of comparison that can't be found in the individual articles, and is well-kept and spam free. Themfromspace (talk) 01:28, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: We must have hundreds of such pages on WP, and personally I find them very useful (hence my visit to the page, as I wanted to learn about different wiki farms). The content is well within the mission of the project. The fact that some individual entries are "non-notable" is not a reason to delete all of them; indeed, it's perfectly appropriate that examples of low notability are entered in a list - these are not complete articles on "non-notable" entries. Walkerma (talk) 08:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sound idea, in my view. A good thing for someone to do somewhere, just not here. And let us indeed render them all assistance in getting it to the right place, wherever that is. Guy (Help!) 21:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Difficulty of establishing reliable sources for freeware. I have commented at WP:RELIABLE talk page on the difficulty of establishing notability when the only sources tend to be forums, newsgroups, personal pages as freeware does not buy advertising and thus does not get reviewed in major periodicals, etc. I feel the guidelines should reflect this and would welcome other comments.Jezhotwells (talk) 21:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above comment is referring to Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources#Citations for freeware and shareware and open source software. I don't usually bother anymore with these type of articles because most of the time certain deletionist-oriented spam fighters far outnumber the more regular editors of such an article. So, many of the software-related articles end up only with a short list of software or services of mainly the larger commercial companies, and sometimes the occasional freeware/shareware. So Wikipedia mainly discusses only one side of the software and hosting area: commercial companies. This violates WP:NPOV in my opinion. There are a few article exceptions.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Software/Free Software helps counter this systemic bias. See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias and its talk page. I left a request for additional input there and at wikibooks:Wikibooks:Reading room/General#Freeware and shareware. There is a similar list there: wikibooks:Starting and Running a Wiki Website/Hosted Wikis. It is a fairly long wiki-farm list, and it links directly to the wiki farms. So it is actually useful. How-to books should try to be useful, and not just academic like much of Wikipedia. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a stand-alone list, that would be list of wiki farms. This is an article which takes primary sources, abstracts the features which we think are significant, and tabulates them. Which fails on two counts: first that the selection and comparison criteria are our arbitrary criteria not ones taken form reliable independent sources, and second that Wikipedia is not supposed to do original research. It is an absolute absurdity to suggest that this article exists to counter systemic bias - in fact, it is here to reinforce systemic bias, by over-documenting a self-referential concept. But your example of assuming bad faith is obviously very persuasive. Not. Guy (Help!) 21:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In form and function, this is a stand-alone list. Note that Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists states that "the name or title List of _ _ is still preferable to Table of _ _ or Comparison of _ _." I argued above that the list should be renamed and I stand by that per the guidelines. Themfromspace (talk) 02:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize if it seems like I assumed bad faith. I may have overgeneralized about the motivations of the spam fighters commenting in this AfD. For that I apologize. I struck out part of my previous comment referring to current spam fighters. By the way, I also remove the spam I see in external links.
It does not matter to me whether the article is called a list or a comparison. Many lists have columns for features. See Comparison of raster graphics editors, Comparison of Internet forum software, and many more lists and charts.
The systemic bias I am referring to is the bias to skew towards including only larger commercial interests in lists. Thus, inclusion criteria that require notability for all entries should not be used unnecessarily. The list is not yet too long. Please see WP:PAPER.
When it gets too long we can set up more limiting inclusion criteria. Such as a certain Alexa number or higher as suggested on the article talk page by User:Angela, (the Wikimedia Foundation advisory board chair, and founder of Wikia, the most notable of wiki farms).
Another possibility is to consolidate this list with wikibooks:Starting and Running a Wiki Website/Hosted Wikis, and keep the list there. We can leave a more detailed article on wiki farms here with a link to the list there.
From WP:PAPER (emphasis added): "There is a feasible limit for article size that depends on page download size for Wikipedia's dial-up and microbrowser readers and readability considerations for everybody (see Wikipedia:Article size). After a point, splitting an article into separate articles and leaving adequate summaries is a natural part of growth for a topic (see Wikipedia:Summary style). Some topics are covered by print encyclopedias only in short, static articles; however, because Wikipedia does not require paper, we can include more information, provide more external links, update more quickly, and so on." --Timeshifter (talk) 06:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I never like to see a point of view I agree with argued badly, so I'm gonna clarify my opinion here in an attempt at making a better argument than just WP:PAPER. Split-off articles must also obey our notability guidelines. Just because WP:PAPER allows articles to be split off doesn't mean they can sneak under the radar of the notability guidelines. This article should be kept because is about a notable topic, Wiki-farms, and how they relate to one another. This subject is notable not because I say so or because Blogger Joe says so, but because it has been picked up in multiple independant third-party sources, which are required per WP:N, and the material within the article is somewhat well-referenced and able to be verified. WP:N trumps WP:PAPER anyday of the week, and this article clearly passes the more stringent test of WP:N. Themfromspace (talk) 07:33, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There is no disagreement from me about the notability of the topic. I thought I mentioned that already, though I didn't emphasize that point strongly enough this time obviously. I guess after 4 AfDs I forget that what I already wrote many times before is buried in the previous 3 AfDs. I have little doubt though that the list will remain in some form, or be incorporated into an article just called "Wiki farms." I am more concerned about having a more complete list. I am not trying to "sneak under the radar of the notability guidelines", and that is bad faith on your part. The list topic is notable whether the list is short or long. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As above, wiki farm is a notable topic. But a feature comparison of Wiki farms, most of which do not have Wikipedia articles, violates WP:NOT, WP:LINKFARM and in this case mainly WP:NOR as well. Guy (Help!) 21:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • As much as it pains me to see the content deleted, I must agree that it does not meet our policies. It is mostly a directory, and it violates WP:HOWTO in my mind as well. Given its usefulness, I think finding an appropriate wiki to transwiki it to would be a worthwhile measure, however. seresin ( ¡? )  07:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What policy does it violate? WP:HOWTO redirects to Category:Wikipedia how-to. What about Comparison of raster graphics editors, Comparison of Internet forum software, and many other lists? Do they violate policies? Maybe you mean WP:NOT#HOWTO. This list is not a how-to guide. It does not tell anyone how to edit wiki pages, how to start a site on a wiki farm, or any how-to info.
Thanks for appreciating my idea of finding an appropriate wiki to transwiki this useful list in a more complete form. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:21, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I think the problem is that WP:LISTS is not clear about inclusion criteria for freeware, shareware, free hosting, and other computer-related lists. The wiki farm topic is notable, but there are only a few notable wiki farms. Notable in print media, mainstream media, and the normal places for WP:RS. So I think I will discuss this over time at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Software/Free Software, WP:LISTS, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), etc..

Maybe we can get a policy on how many entries can be in a notable computer-related list before inclusion criteria must be implemented, and what those inclusion criteria might be. Otherwise, arbitrary numbers will be used to limit list entries. Many times some very complete well-charted, notable, computer-related lists have been cut down from 30, 40, 50 entries to 10 big commercial software programs, hosts, etc.. An idea might be to limit computer-related lists to 50 separate entries. Comparison of wiki farms has 49 separate entries according to my paste of the list into the freeware NoteTab Light. It can count the lines or paragraphs in a list. I like the idea of using the Alexa number to keep the list under 50 entries. We can't include all wiki farms in the list. I agree with that. On the other hand I don't want nothing but 10 big companies like Wikia that managed to get mainstream media coverage. That would be unfair, and not very useful to readers. I like Wikia, and I am a volunteer admin there, by the way. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:55, 19 January 2009 (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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