Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/NikeTalk (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 per notability discussion. Most of the media coverage is trivial, but traffic reports and subculture discussion in the Adbuster article seem to clearly establish notability.. Shell ^babelfish 21:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NikeTalk

This article about a Nike shoes collection discussion site survived a prior AfD as "no consensus" back in March (see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/NikeTalk), but since then has not been improved one bit, nor has the notability been shown further. It is still my belief that it is nothing more than spam and should be delete. --Nlu (talk) 11:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete for now, unless secondary references are included that substantiate notability. Addhoc 11:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, good rewrite. Addhoc 11:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete it, just like it should have been in the first place. Blood red sandman 12:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete again ST47 12:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete it, just a bunch of spam. Thirdgen 17:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep it. This is just plain petty. Scores of fan clubs enjoy uncontested Wikipedia entries.

Let's take a peek at an exemplary wikipedia fan club entry: [[1]] There's something odd about this one. This entry has no sources and doesn't even contain correct grammar, yet I don't see any deletion request. I don't see Nlu calling the entry's notability into question, and yet I can't imagine how THE DOYLE FAN CLUB has more members worldwide than www.niketalk.com. As I don't read any poorly dittoed fright rock "zines," I can't recall the last time THE DOYLE FAN CLUB has ever breached the mainstream media.

I could accept a style critique. The article, while constantly vandalized, was not well written to begin with, and I'm aware that this site's pedantic gatekeepers typically require that each entry be uniformly encoded in pretentious academic jargon - using as many cute latin phrases as possible so as to more accurately indulge the fantasy of actually participating in a real academic journal. If you want to condense this entry down to a banal recitation of verifiable facts regarding the site's traffic, history, and external mentions - go hog wild. We can all live with that.

What irks me is that this has, for whatever reason, become a personal crusade for a wikipedia administrator. Nlu, you really destroyed any shred of objectivity by continually railing against NikeTalk.com's "notability." How did this site require FURTHER proof of notability than VERIFIED mentions in Time, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal? The site's popularity may be verified simply by viewing the independently collected web stats. Since I doubt you've ever visited the site, let me give you a hand: [http://extremetracking.com/open?login=ntjordan ] Currently, the site receives between 70,000 and 90,000 unique visitors per day - and this is off peak. Over 4.6 million unique visitors viewed the site in January of this year alone. If that is not notable, you have a hell of a lot of entries to delete.

What's more, you've obviously attempted to narrow the scope of this debate in order to railroad this entry from wikipedia. You DELETED several "keep" votes - which in no way violated wikipedia standards - and then blocked all new and unregistered users from participating in this forum and prevented a TRUE public hearing. The NikeTalk entry has been vandalized on probably hundreds of occasions, and yet after ONE miscreant violates this topic you place it under security? Your motives here are transparent. I honestly can't imagine what your problem is with a harmless online community for sneaker fans sharing wikipedia space with millions of other articles, but you've clearly demonstrated a subjective bias against this entry. You've abused what little "power" you possess. And for what? To keep a sneaker message board from "contaminating" an encyclopedia that enshrines, among other things, warcraft mods and testicle cuffs? This is a resource that is, supposedly, open to the general public.

There is NO standard violated by this entry that has not been violated a thousand times over by entries you continue to allow. If this entry is spam, what of the entry for www.newegg.com? Does anyone really need a wikipedia entry to detail the history of a web store? If this entry is not notable, then what of The Doyle Fan Club or any of the thousands upon thousands of other equally obscure entries?

Look, wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the people. It's intended to include topics that stodgy "formal" encyclopedias wouldn't deign to include. www.niketalk.com is the largest online community for sneaker collectors in the world today. Whether that's important to you or not is utterly subjective - and your standards are SUPPOSED to be OBjective. The entry should exist for those all those who might seek it. If you can abide an entry for the Cinderella Stamp Club, (600 members) I'm sure there's a place for the world's largest community of sneaker fans.

Wikipedia users, I'm not asking you to LOVE this entry. I am asking you to be fair - and in this case most of the criticism levied against this entry has been inconsistent and superficial at best. --RakimAllah 03:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

For the records, I reverted to a pre-vandalism version because these anons/newly registered users removed valid delete votes and defaced the AfD discussion itself. See the history of the AfD. Since those votes would have been disregarded anyway (not only as vandalism but also as votes by users who were too new), there is no loss. --Nlu (talk) 05:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Still more hypocrisy from Nlu... First of all, unless you have IP records PROVING that all of those individuals were responsible for vandalizing the site you have NO basis for removing their valid "keep" votes. You have to admit, it all looks both petty and suspect to have cut off ALL "keep" votes and restored all "delete" votes. Altering or deleting votes makes a mockery of Wikipedia's "honor system" - and it appears you're every bit as guilty as those you consider "vandals" in this instance. Even though I clearly want the article kept, ultimately I respect the integrity of wikipedia enough to acknowledge and respect votes that go against my cause. You can't make the same claim - and you're an administrator. What does that say?

Simply because they are new users, you don't feel they have a say in the matter? MOST wikipedia users do NOT register for this site. Shouldn't all wikipedia viewers have a say? If an article is important to someone, shouldn't they be able to voice their opinions and contribute to the discussion? What you're attempting to accomplish is to limit this debate to those who have little to no understanding of the subject matter. Imagine if we put one of your prized articles on Chinese historical figures up for a deletion debate and allowed only Alabamian Klansmen to vote. Do you think they'd consider your subjects "notable?" You appear to have no respect for or understanding of the subject matter - and it's clearly biased your judgment.

Look at the quality of arguments tethered to these "delete" votes. How well supported are these sputtered fragments? "Spam" How so? If this is spam, you have thousands and thousands of other articles that would seemingly fit the same criteria. Wikipedia hosts hundreds of articles promoting businesses both online and off. Is it only spam if the author veils her or his bias behind third person objective? Not that it matters, but NikeTalk.com isn't even a business. All ad revenue above and beyond the site's hosting costs goes to various charities. It's a community that holds a unique position of influence within the sneaker industry, as indicated by all of those sources you fail to acknowledge. If someone can type "newegg" into your search engine and find an article that reads like a brochure, why is it that a sneaker fan cannot type in NikeTalk to find more information? If vandalism weren't such a pervasive problem here, perhaps there'd be a better core article for those interested to update. As it stands, the article can take one step forward and three steps back. Yet you clearly care more about the vandalism of your prized "delete" votes than the vandalism of actual CONTENT. How fair is it that people who have no real interest in this article, yet enjoy feeling as though they're really "editors" of something as ostensibly intellectual as an encyclopedia, are able to impose snap judgments in this space - yet those who actually care the most about the subject of this article are locked out because they had no reason to open an account in the past? Aren't they still wikipedia users? You're simply afraid of opening up the floor because you know that you'll never achieve a consensus delete under such conditions - so you JUMPED at the chance to manipulate the process to engineer your desired result. That's pathetic. You could've simply reinstated the lost "delete" votes, since you're following this so closely.

You have NO case with regard to notability - and you know that. How many other entries are asked to CONSTANTLY add new sources merely to prove their notability over and over again? The site was just mentioned in Time magazine in March. While the EASILY verifiable traffic and membership figures and previous mainstream media mentions should have been MORE than sufficient, the site has since been mentioned in the LA Times and Adbusters magazine. What more do you want? How is it that a stamp collectors club with 600 mentions is notable, but a community with over 50,000 members and 70,000+ regular visitors that has received international media attention is not? What, exactly, remains unproven about the site's notability? Have ezboard.com, extreme web tracking, Time magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, the Washington Post, Adbusters, Details, Strength, etc. etc. ALL fallen for some "hoax" here? Visit the freaking site. ONCE. You'll find a community with 50,000 plus members - just as ALL of these sources claim. What more can you POSSIBLY ask for to demonstrate notability?

Compare the NikeTalk entry to other fan club entries. There are NO SOURCES in any number of unchallenged fan club entries - not ONE. There's no source to verify its content. You have XBox live "clans" with wikipedia articles for crying out loud. Go bully them. This article contains verifiable sources from some of the most respected mainstream periodicals in the world and that's suddenly not enough to "prove notability?" You have to acknowledge that you're being a little inconsistent here, to say the very least. While you may prefer starcraft mods, testicle cuffs, fright rock, and stamp collectors to sneakers - that's no reason to try and run a site off what should be a public resource. As with any encyclopedia, wikipedia ought to have the potential to BROADEN one's horizons a bit. Take advantage. It's not just about what interests YOU. --RakimAllah 08:14, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Whether those users were vandalizing or not is open to public judgment. I've posted the link to the history of the discussion. I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that they did vandalize this discussion. Your attacks on me just, I think, shows the lack of case for keep (at least prior to Pixelface's rewrite). Even after Pixelface's rewrite, however, I believe this is still a spam magnet.

As for the strawman argument of "but there are other articles more deserving of deletion!" it should be noted that you can propose articles for deletion, too, and if you think that those other articles don't belong, propose to delete them. --Nlu (talk) 15:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

LACK of a case? That's rich. I've posted an actual defense for this entry. You've posted nothing more than a bunch of empty claims. You CLAIM the site is spam, but you make NO argument for it. You CLAIM the site isn't notable, but you make NO argument for it. Have you REALLY passed the bar? For crying out loud, since when has "because I said so" been a valid argument? For the sake of novelty, try to make a point here.

Go back and look at the log you posted. This entry, and ONLY this entry, is responsible for the removal of valid "delete" votes: [[2]]

There's one other superfluous entry, the "get off ISS" entry. SEVERAL other entries contain nothing but valid comments from wikipedia users, which you then removed. What's wrong with these entries: "* Dont Delete You can't delete it, it has 500,000,000 page views - cafa301" "* * Dont Delete This is one of the biggest forums on the internet-samberkun" If a red user name indicates a new user, you KEPT delete votes from new users and, conversely, you DELETED keep votes from new users. What does that say about you?

Your claim that the site isn't "notable enough" for wikipedia remains indefensible. That you've repeatedly asserted this claim only proves your bias. Even so, let's prove your bias a few more times for the benefit of those who haven't yet been totally disillusioned. If the revised NikeTalk entry is spam, surely the article for www.newegg.com is spam. For crying out loud, go look at the entry. They're using it to advertise their upcoming 'regional expansions.' The whole entry reads like an advertisement. So, what's the difference? Please, tell me. IF you were a person of principle, I imagine you'd wish to apply the SAME standards to every single entry. IF you were a person of principle, you'd vote to DELETE the entry for www.newegg.com on these same grounds. If it is NOT deleted and "fails to improve" even after the community allows it to stay, I would then expect you to HOUND this entry with future delete requests until a "consensus" decision is reached. Otherwise, you're PROVING that you're treating this particular entry differently than others. Of course, I shouldn't have to be the one to propose the article for deletion. Now that you, an administrator, are aware of another spam entry like www.newegg.com - YOU will be the one to propose and argue for the article's deletion. It's your goal to remove all spam articles that you're aware of, is it not? Or, are you going to admit that you're only interested in removing "spam" articles if they somehow irk you? So much for your objectivity. This isn't a campaign against spam. You just have beef with this entry - and it's now obvious to all. At least have the integrity to own up to it and explain why you'll tolerate "spam" from newegg and thousands of other sites - even after they've been brought to your attention - but you're willing to wage this little crusade against niketalk's entry.

You're still not going to reach a consensus, especially after the article has been stripped down to include ONLY those statements easily verified by the included sources. The moment the NikeTalk entry was cleaned up, your claims were nullified. The subject is obviously notable. The entry has been scrubbed to the bone. That you continue to press for deletion only indicts you further. Stop the bleeding. Sadly, it all reflects poorly on wikipedia since you're so flagrantly misusing your administrative access. Fair-minded users won't stand for it. --RakimAllah 20:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. Has this website really been mentioned in Newsweek, Time Magazine, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, et cetera? Does it really have "47,060 registered users"? If so then we probably shouldn't be having this discussion. RFerreira 08:41, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, after massive rewrite by myself despite RakimAllah failing WP:CIVIL. Does seem a little spammish though.Pixelface 09:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
• keep please after massive rewrite based on media coverage and large membership numbers Yuckfoo 19:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no independently verifiable membership statistic. --Nlu (talk) 06:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

For the love of.... Do you do any research at all when you condemn these entries? NikeTalk is hosted by Ezboard. You may know them as one of the world's largest message board networks. The address www.niketalk.com is actually a redirect leading to http://p093.ezboard.com/bniketalk. So, it's not NIKETALK claiming 52,162 users - it's EZBOARD's own system. Not good enough for Nlu standards? Email someone at ezboard and ask them to confirm it. Or, you know, just man up and accept it. Either way works. --RakimAllah 15:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Nice rewrite, but I don't see anything that isn't a passing mention. ~ trialsanderrors 02:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, decent sized forum that is notable enough to be on Wikipedia. bbx 06:18, 2 September 2006 (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.