Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Something Awful Forums

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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 of the debate was - kept

[edit] Something Awful Forums

This seems far far too small a subject and far too localized to justify such a massive article on Wikipedia. Considering other major forums like GameFAQs, etc. are only described briefly in their parent article, this doesn't really belong as very nonencyclopedic.--Etaonish 20:57, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

  • Keep. The size, scope and popularity of the forums seem large enough to warrant its own page. --Klo 04:36, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. If Wikipedia can have a detailed article about Slashdot trolls, then why not the SA forums? 24.229.95.152 16:57, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Although not a "goon" myself, found the article interesting. Isn't the Something Awful Forums something like the #6 most popular forum on the Internet? The forums themselves have expanded beyond the original Something Awful website into an entity of their own, a hub of Internet culture. I do think the article is very specific and detailed, perhaps overly so, but it's not harming anyone to contain so much data. I'm not entirely opposed to moving the content to the Something Awful writeup, though I do see the validity of keeping it in its own article. --Jonathan Drain 23:44, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete and Redirect: I quite agree. Let the Something Awful article serve, if service is needed. We're not in the business of being a web guide, or a TV guide, or a record guide, IMO. Geogre 21:13, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. This used to be a large part of the Something Awful article. It got too big; it was split. Now you propose shoving it back in again. Nothing doing. There is far, far too much information to merge, which is why it was split in the first place. --Golbez 21:16, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
    This is a very good point by Golbez. If an article must be split because its long, its child articles shouldn't be VfD'd. Thus all votes asking for merge/redirect should probably just be considered "keep" (Since it would have to be split off again anyways) —siroχo 19:31, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Merge/redirect. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 21:29, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Kill it. Delete. Non-encylopedic l33t wanking over distinctly non-funny or important forum. Oh, and tl;dr . Terrapin 21:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    This voter seems to have a vendetta against the topic. The article clearly encyclopedic (just read it, and look up the definition of encyclopedic while you're at it). The forum is very popular, "important" is a POV, and its level of funniness does not matter. —siroχo
  • Keep. Major forum with a lot of information in the article. - RedWordSmith 21:39, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Incredibly, Wikipedia doesn't just cover stuff that you, personally, are interested in. --Twinxor 21:46, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • We've had a lot of these lately, where a few users decide that having a quality article on a niche topic is somehow unnacceptable, and then everyone rushes to defend it. Whatever what you think of Wikipedia's scope, it's not useful to have a detailed, well-written article deleted. --Twinxor 22:19, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Amazingly enough, I've proposed one VfD so far. This one. I don't do this to any article I don't care about: I do this to any article that I feel is nonencyclopedic and quite useless to Wikipedia as a whole. How many people do you think would genuinely care about this? We've had the same debate over the GameFAQs forum histories: that eventually was completely deleted over my objections. If GameFAQs doesn't deserve it, what makes you think SA is so important that they warrant a special wiki entry? It's not even close to being one of the more active message boards online anyway. Plus, your argument can be applied to anything: you should also argue for the inclusion of a hyperdetailed article on my personal life under Edward Fu. It can be a quality article on a niche topic, but it's unacceptable all the same. --Etaonish 01:01, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
        • This isn't about GameFAQs. It's about Something Awful Forums, like the big bar at the top of the edit box says. --Golbez 01:07, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
          • Congratulations for not being able to pick up any analogy at all, and also for completely ignoring everything else I had said. "If GameFAQs doesn't deserve it, what makes you think SA is so important that they warrant a special wiki entry?" Considering not even Slashdot gets this much coverage. --Etaonish 01:38, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
            • There is no analogy with GameFAQs. GameFAQs is a bunch of 12-year-olds trading catchphrases and potty humour; Something Awful is extremely intellectual (check out their Debate & Discussion forum) and produces a lot of content. Ashibaka ✎ 12:08, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
              • Who died and appointed you to judge whether or not an internet forum is "intellectual" vs "12-year-olds"? The two are equal in activity, the only objective criteria that matters. Not to mention what a gross stereotype you cling to. (Oh, and, by the way, you don't seem to realize that anyone under 13 is banned from GameFAQs due to federal law)--Etaonish 13:09, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
                • So they say. Ashibaka ✎ 17:10, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
                  • Clearly you're not a GameFAQs user: else you can see for yourself. Dozens of people get banned for even joking about their age. That's irrelevant anyway.--Etaonish 18:16, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
        • I don't really understant – as a result of losing the GameFAQs battle, you decided to go delete other stuff? The thing is, encyclopedic-ness is pretty subjective. Seems to me that SA is one of the more influential forums out there, as evidenced by the memes it spawns and the thousands who have paid for membership. --Twinxor 03:09, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
            • Face reality: SA is NOT highly important to the Internet's community. Alexa ranking of 4608 for the main site? Also, you've misunderstood me: I learned from the GameFAQs battle exactly why our large articles were considered inappropriate for Wikipedia. That's why I've carried it over to this article: it's a waste of resources to list every single forum in all of SA. Encyclopedicness is actually rather objective: In 100 years, will anyone care about FYAD 2.0? You also never answered my post earlier.--Etaonish 13:09, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Very significant web forum and too large to properly merge. --Goobergunch 21:57, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Significant forum, well written article, too big to merge. --Neschek 22:11, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Merge only the content above the ToC into the Something Awful article, then redirect. -Sean Curtin 01:14, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep, and start enforcing the guidelines about what should be listed for deletion. Mark Richards 03:17, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Not notable. --Improv 04:18, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep as some of the most notable forums on the internet. —siroχo 04:54, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Merge / Redirect with Rewrites back into Something Awful. It's pretty pathetic, in a way, that a website can have two fairly lengthy articles written about it that are larger than some articles about major cities. Additionally, articles that contain large indexes of "common terms from the website" don't seem to be very "encyclopedic" in the strictest sense.. many of the terms listed are common on a variety of message boards, not just exclusively SAForums (many of them are used routinely on FARK and others). To those who say "too large to merge", maybe the article on Something Awful needs to be shorter in general.. Wikipedia Is Not A Webguide. --feedle 05:56, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep, strongly. Possibly the most famous, notorious, and notable internet forums. (For the record, I'm not a user there, so I have no vested interest, not that anyone was accusing.) Well-written and extensive articles on niche, fringe, and pop-culture topics are one of the major things which make IMO Wikipedia a superior reference tool to Britannica, et al. Gamaliel 06:34, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. This is ridiculous. This is the most famous and popular Internet forum in the United States, and if 2ch deserves an article for being the most famous in Japan, then SA certainly deserves an article too. Ashibaka ✎ 12:04, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • To both of you above: does 2ch have a subsection on all of its forums? I'm not asking for the SA article to be deleted: I'm asking for that useless stack of SA forum descriptions (FYAD 2.0, for example) to be removed as unencyclopedic. In addition, it is NOT the most famous and popular Internet forum. Strictly based on posts, it has ~19 million compared to ~18 million for GameFAQs; its Alexa ranking is 4608 while GameFAQs is 791.--Etaonish 13:09, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
      • Oh, so we should remove some of the content? Are you suggesting a maximum length for articles? Ashibaka ✎ 17:10, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • No set maximum, obviously, but there's a reasonable limit on how much detail it is worth going into. This much detail on such an insignificant site is unneeded.--Etaonish 18:24, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: Most of the non-Keep comments are comparing the article with others on Wikipedia. So far as I know, this is not how VfD works. VfD looks at each article on its own merits, not compared with others. We don't say "Well all the other articles on X subject are stub-length, so why should this get two full-sized articles," or "Its Alexa rating is lower than other sites, therefore its article must be smaller." We use independent thought and judge each article on its own merits. Just because SA has more text dedicated to it than most major cities is not a reason for deletion - it's a reason for you to stop complaining and add more information to those cities. --Golbez 14:09, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
    • Actually, I am measuring it on its own merits by comparing it to other sites. GameFAQs was cut down after a long debate; since it is more important than SA therefore SA should be cut down. Makes sense to me. Plus, the reason the city articles are shorter than SA isn't because the city articles are bad or short at all, it's because SA is disproportionately long. That's the key: compared to other worthwhile subjects, the SA forums is too detailed on too small a subject matter.
      • Above was said by Etaonish. BTW, since when did # of bytes said on a particular subject equate with the importance of said subject? --Golbez 15:10, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
        • Since Wikipedia was created. Encyclopedias don't labor over minute inane details, neither should we.--Etaonish 18:16, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
          • Then why are you? --Golbez 18:52, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
    • Comment: My reasonings behind my Merge / Redirect had little to do with comparing it to other articles (although my flippant remark about it being larger than some entries for major cities remains: if people put this much energy into the entry for their hometowns, Wikipedia would certainly be the better for it). The reality is, much of the information there could be rewritten in a more encyclopedic format, and the information regarding commonly used terminology on the forums applies to many online forums, not just SA. Longer articles don't always mean "more informative". Some of what is in the Forums article reads like fanboy cruft, and may in fact contain much that could be considered apocryphal. --Feedle 17:16, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep: I've heard of Something Awful for years -- it's been floating around on the periphery of my Net conciousness for as long as I can remember. I read this article with interest. It explains a lot about a Web site and set of forums that has a lot of saturation around the Web. I see value here, if only for the fact that I personally found it valuable and I'm as typical a Net surfer as you're gonna find. --Deane 15:42, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep: The article is too large to re-merge with the main article. --Mr VacBob
  • Delete: fancruft. Wile E. Heresiarch 15:53, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep: The article is long, but its very informative throughout. I enjoyed reading it. Finally I understand all the talk about this website and especially the forums. --irrsinn
  • Merge / Redirect with Rewrites: It needs some major reworking into a more concise form that could be integrated into the Something Awful article. Most of the current page consists of information that would better belong in a Something Awful FAQ or a more general piece on Internet Culture. --BesigedB 18:41, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Keep: With retrospect, I would agree with Golbez's view on what this page is for. --BesigedB 19:06, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • That would be a correctible flaw, anyway, not a cause to remove the entire page. --Mr VacBob
  • Comment: Incidentally, the whole of SomethingAwful's presence on Wikipedia is ~42k. I barely counted half of the articles primarily related to New York City, and those totalled up to ~179kb. Budapest, sadly, lags with only 14k. But do we not write about what we know? I have no problem with pruning this page at all - perhaps, even, in the future, remerging it with SA. But that is not what VfD is for. We do not vote here to prune. We vote here to delete, or to do an immediate merge. Yes? --Golbez 18:52, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • keep Cabalamat 22:02, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Trim/Delete: The article itself is informative if the reader has a casual interest in SA, however it goes into way too much detail. Yes, the forums are large and each has it's own unique merits but if people want to know the specifics and the history of the forums, then can goto SA for that. There is a wealth of such detailed information in the "SAclopedia". It's a shame to lose the time and effort someone has put into writing it, but it's really just too much of a niché subject to deserve such detail. --62.190.225.1 23:44, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Wiki is not paper. --Ian Maxwell 05:04, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
  • Keep. silsor 23:51, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep The article is informative, and a useful resource for people that might be interested in joining the forums, but are on the fence as to whether they want to toss their $10 into the abyss or not. Some downsides about the forums could stand to be made in the article, but in a civil manner and not in a way percieved as vandalism. --BonzoESC 02:04, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Absolutely keep. I have read this article from start to finish a few times and I had never even been to the forums (though had been to the site). While I'm not one for bandwagon appeals, the sheer number of responses here should speak to the level of interest in the article. --Ian Maxwell 05:04, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
  • Keep. --Fastfission 06:01, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Will be Trimmed, Redirected and Merged once VFD period is over. Be bold. This is ridiculous, a 6,000 word article (read that again) about a forum that is ALREADY mentioned in the Something Awful article. The fact that the sockpuppets are out in force tells me all I need to know. Terrapin 14:28, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • That's a serious accusation, Terrapin, and I don't like your dictatorial attitude. You should still be bound by the vote. If you are accusing users of cheating, at least have the decency to accuse them by name. Keep. --L33tminion 18:46, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
      • Tell you what, I'll change my vote to keep if SA posts more Leonard Crabs "faux lawyer" emails to litigious idiots. Those make me LMAO. Terrapin 21:13, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • "sockpuppets" is kind of a ridiculous declaration, don't you think, considering that this exactly the kind of vote which strangers would come to vote on? Good thing this isn't receiving much attention on the Something Awful forums themselves, because then you would have hundreds of votes from newcomers, all of whom no doubt would be "sockpuppets" according to you. silsor 19:32, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
      • Isn't it official Wikipedia policy to ban this from happening? Dozens of users registering simply to votespam?--Etaonish 21:12, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
        • Each user is entitled to one vote each. However, the 100 edit rule might suggest that a user who signs up and make their first action to place a vote, should not have his vote weigh quite as much.--Jonathan Drain 21:30, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Terrapin, if you think I'm a sockpuppet I've got [21C!s at Everything2] that suggest otherwise.--Jonathan Drain 21:30, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Why did you do this before the discussion period ended? MrVacBob 01:42, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. I'll refrain from further comment here. Kim Bruning 19:01, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Normally I'd vote merge/redirect, except that this was split off due to length. It may need to be cut down to focus less on trends only interesting to "goons", but that's tangential to VfD. People (on both sides of the debate) need to calm down, as some comments are getting perilously close to personal attacks. — Gwalla | Talk 22:50, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete or at least severely trim/merge/redirect. Concur with Wile E. Heresiarch: this is fancruft. jni 13:27, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Forums don't deserve pages of their own. This is just plain fancruft. --Andylkl 14:17, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

  • Alert: Both Irrsinn and Mr VacBob are very clearly sockpuppets, user accounts created solely to vote here. I ask: is this the product of an "intellectual" forum, so desperate that they are creating new accounts on Wikipedia to votespam here?--Etaonish 18:22, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
    • Note: MrVacBob's account was started on 22 Aug 2004, well before this vote began. There are 9 out of 15 total contributions that are unrelated to this vote, 7 of which were made (all to SA or SAF) before the vote began. Despite having a "red" name, Jonathan Drain's account was started well before this vote began, 8 Sep 2004. He has a total of 25 out of 39 edits unrelated to this vote, 17 of which were made before this vote began. func(talk) 04:44, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Such appeals do not help your case, Etaonish. --Golbez 18:52, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
    • So your response is that I'm a gimmick account of someone else? Perhaps you should use Google. I'm certainly not going to actively bother to disprove that, since I doubt anyone else believes the claim. --Mr VacBob
    • Do some basic research before making such outrageous claims. Google would be a good start. Ashibaka ✎ 23:08, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • I can voice for MrVacBob's legitimacy; I've known him on IRC for quite a while now.--Jonathan Drain 23:11, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • I apologize for using an inappropriate word. What I meant was that the account was almost certainly created because of this controversy hence ought not to be given much weight. That is standard wiki policy: see the 100-edit rule.--Etaonish 00:04, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
    • Yes infact I did sign up after I read this article and noticed it was up for deletion. I had no reason to sign up before. I don't write articles on wikis in my second language. Also I'm not a member at somethingawful, i wouldn't pay for that. --irrsinn 19:20, Oct 14, 2004 (GMT)
  • Rewrite into : the article is also blatantly inserting dubious claims: like the section on 'ZOMG', which says "Rick (real name Matthew Milan) and hannibal (2nd. Lt. James "Turbo" Curbo) are its creators; others who claim to have coined it are lying.)". Do you really think that were it not for SA, no one would be using that phrase? It's been independently invented many times over before and after SA. This article has to be cut down to a reasonable level, if not simply deleted completely.--Etaonish 18:22, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
    • Yeah, because "ZOMG" is a common typo. 24.91.125.90 23:14, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Yeah, because no one could have ever thought of something like "ZOMG". It's not very difficult to think of something like that. I used it very early on in my internet career in instant messaging with no outside influence.--Etaonish 00:04, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
    • I will agree that a four-letter Internet word is not very important to the dictionary, but this post is the first occurance of the word on Usenet, and is being used by one of the aforementioned people. It may be an accurate claim. (edit: there is a single use in 1999, but it only begins to be used more frequently after the linked post) -- Mr VacBob
    • I can't tell if 24.91.125.90 is being serious or not here, but I challenge anyone who says that ZOMG existed prior to Curbo and Milan's creation of it in January 2003, to bring forth evidence. The Something Awful Forums can be surprisingly effective as a means of spreading memes, especially with its links to 4chan. I will, however, concede that the "others who claim to have coined it are lying" is a poor way of phrasing it. (Edit: I just found a 1999 usenet post which said ZOMG. I still hold that Curbo and Milan coined and popularized the phrase in spite of its earlier use.) --Jonathan Drain 23:36, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Clarification So I'm Matthew Milan, and I did coin (or conversely, re-coin) ZOMG with James Curbo in January 2003. It wasn't really an SA thing initially - James and I were both mods/ops in a DC hub called 'Raspberry Heaven', which was a very peripheral spin-off of SA. James and I (along with other members of the hub) started using the 'word' to mock script kiddies and the like. I was posting a lot in alt-raptors at the time, and it got used a lot in there as well by myself as the poor Raps went belly up that year. Eventually it leaked out of the DC Hub into SA, where it spread into infamy. For a while, I personally tried to promote its use to see how widespread it could become, but that was ages ago. I'm sure people used ZOMG before we did. I'm sure people will use it in the future. It's a stupid joke/experiment that stopped holding interest for me ages ago. I will not miss it when it is gone. I am however, rather annoyed by Etaonish, who seems to be a complete fuckwad. Dear Sir: Please shove your self-serving rhetoric up your own ass, you pretentious twatburger. Also, I can sell you zomg.com for a dollar if it stops your from whining. --Matthew Milan
  • Comment: What irks me tremendously (though I assure you it has nothing to do with why I nominated SA forums) is that the exact same controversy erupted over the GameFAQs articles, and some of the users currently wanting to keep SA voted against keeping GameFAQs (this is a vague vague recollection, no formal accusation). GameFAQs was split; its board histories were then put up on VfD, upon which they remerged it with GameFAQs, and it was later completely chopped out of the article. The primary reason no one protested was that there was a dearth of GameFAQs users on Wiki at the time. But SA forums has a large base of SA goons on Wikipedia that will inevitably support its own article.

The SA Forums article is unencyclopedic for the same reasons a vanity page on myself is unencyclopedic: no one really cares about FYAD 2.0, a forum that lasted all of one day. This is obscurity painted as something that actually matters to Wikipedia. I have no vendetta against SA; rather, the SA goons have a vendetta against anyone remotely anti-SA.

Back to Golbez's point. SA was split, but that doesn't mean the material in the child articles was good. The material in SA forums is *inherently* unneeded and should have never led to the split of the original SA article in the first place. Golbez presumes that the material that ballooned the original SA article was needed, when in fact it should have led to it being removed rather than splitting the article in two.

SA then argues that the main reason it belongs on Wiki rather than GameFAQs is because they are more "intellectual", they somehow are "better" than a bunch of "12-year-olds". I claim that using that argument in and of itself disproves their theory, but the real point is that you should only measure importance by objective factors. Objectively, SA is less important than GameFAQs due to its much lower Alexa rating and the fact that it has a tenth of its posts.

  • With respect, Etaonish, the Something Awful Forums requires payment to sign up (albeit a nominal amount) which dissuades casual posters and children from signing up, while dissuading users from making an ass of themselves since their membership is actually worth something. The average SA "goon" is between young adult and college age, while the GameFAQs forums appeals to fans of even childrens' video games. I give the example that GameFAQs members routinely vote Final Fantasy VII and its characters as the best in the site's online polls. This doesn't mean there aren't both intellectuals and childish members on each forum, mainly that the average Something Awful Forums-goer is older, mentally older and smarter than the average GameFAQs forumgoer. I dare say that quantity is not better than quality when it comes to content; you need only view Something Awful's consistently humorous "Photoshop Phriday" and "Comedy Goldmine" articles to judge the calibre of many of their members. --Jonathan Drain 23:58, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Actually, if you take a look at the boards, it is usually FFVII that is criticized and decried as undeserving. What simply happens is that general people who visit the site tend to be younger and vote for FFVII, but they are irrepresentative of the boards theselves. In addition, GameFAQs is the site of much intellectual discussion, and I personally find it much better than what I have seen of SA.--Etaonish 00:04, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
      • Ah, then you're a user of the GameFAQs forums. In any case, I believe that the Something Awful Forums has actually overtaken its parent webpage in terms of fame and notoriety. As such, when I think of SA I think of the boards before the webpage; when I think of GameFAQs, the reverse is true, as I visit it most often to find game faqs.
        • ^^Jonathan Drain well, the point was, we're comparing the two board articles. The same thing happened to both.--Etaonish 00:22, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
          • That's a generalization, both forums are different. Do you mean to say that both expanded beyond their parent articles? I see where you're coming from here, but the Something Awful forums is more than simply a forum linked to another website - it's an online community. The people there aren't just forumgoers, they're goons; they have their own subculture and camaraderie. The forums are more important than the page, not the other way around - despite the GameFAQs forums being more popular numerically (3,000 goons online right now versus ~5,500 GameFAQs forumgoers). In addition, I would find it difficult to consider Etaonish unbiased in this matter, since he's a GameFAQs member himself.--Jonathan Drain 00:48, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
            • Interestingly, the same logic applies to GameFAQs. The boards are now almost totally separate from the FAQs. Please don't assume things about things you don't know much about. And I can be perfectly NPOV even though I'm a GameFAQer. See my other post. --Etaonish 01:42, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
            • Incidentally, I'm a member of both forums, so like, what does that say about me? --Golbez 01:11, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
              • It means you're a twelve year old goon ;) Seriously though, what I mean to say is that from previous edits, it's clear that Etaonish has a bias against the Something Awful Forums. He's obviously not pleased that GameFAQs forums lost its own writeup, and, holding his own GameFAQs forums in higher esteem than the Something Awful Forums, (he rates their entry as highly as vanity writeups on non-famous individuals) requests the same fate for their writeup. --Jonathan Drain 01:27, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
          • I should also add that it's clear that the SA members who refer to the GameFAQs forums as "a bunch of twelve year olds" have clearly soured the reputation of their forums in Etaonish's eyes, who, as a GameFAQs forumgoer, would clearly take such a statement personally. --00:52, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
            • Correction: it means that I was a newb at the time of the GameFAQs deletion, and I have since realized and fought against people who repeatedly add random board history to the article. I voted for a controversial deletion of a LUEshi article, the main fad on the board that is just as notable as tl:dr. Now I extend the policy to SA. I assure you I have no bias against SA, in fact, I used to share an account with a person there before dropping it. You are mistaken if you feel that my being a GameFAQer has anything to do with it. (By the way, you were right, saying "a bunch of 12 year olds" does piss me off, but I know better than to seek Internet grudges.)--Etaonish 01:42, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

In short, either all of these forum articles ARE encyclopedic, upon which any remotely popular internet forum deserves a Wikipedia article devoted to its history and traditions and fads, or all of these forum articles are NOT encyclopedic, upon which the SA forums deserve no more than a mention and some objective material about when it was created, etc.

(posted on Siroxo's talk page) --Etaonish 21:08, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

No, it's not an all or nothing proposition. Each decision is made on a case by case basis. This is precisely why we have a discussion forum here at VfD instead of merely a deletion checklist. All forums should not be included or excluded, just like we don't include or exclude all books, people, institutions, TV shows, etc.

I also don't think the relative Alexa ranking of SA vs. GameFAQs is relevant. Of course we should take it into account, and SA's ranking is rather high I understand. But notability is not just ratings or rankings. SA has an influence and noteriety far beyond its rankings, one which I don't believe GameFAQs has despite its higher traffic. (SA's part in the propigation of the All Your Base meme, for example.) I would compare SA to television shows like Twin Peaks, Buffy, or the original Star Trek, much discussed shows which are far more notable than shows which far outstriped their ratings, crap like One Tree Hill or Charmed which are far less notable and will be quickly forgotten. Gamaliel 06:08, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

    • Actually, it's relevant because there is really no other way to objectively measure influence. Sites higher up on Alexa are more important. Obviously trivial differences are irrelevant, but when there is such a huge gap (4608 vs 791, and keep in mind this is people who visit ANY part of the site of SA), it clearly shows that the more popular site is more influential. (BTW, according to the official AYB history, it wasn't SA, but rather Overclocked that was mainly responsible http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/story.shtml#hist --Etaonish 16:46, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)
      • Numerical popularity is the only thing measured in pagehits, not relevance or influence. However, even so, we should take the Alexa figures in context. Gamefaqs shares Alexa count (#791) with its own boards, likewise, SA shares Alexa count (#4,608) with its own boards. Gamefaqs has a huge number of pages, being a website about pretty much every single game and game system ever, with at perhaps thirty or more FAQs on any popular recent game. Conversely, Something Awful's main page is updated only once daily at best, and its forums are paid registration only, limiting the number of pages and visitors it appears to have. I'm not disputing the popularity of the GameFAQs forums, I'm merely saying that it's not quite the subculture that makes the Something Awful Forums an internet phenomenon in itself. --Jonathan Drain 22:03, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • This is a more accurate history: http://frogstar.com/aybabtu/aa-history.asp -- Mr VacBob
  • Keep. The Something Awful Forums are a part of a lot of humor on the internet, with many internet meme's, catchprhases and other known nuances originating from those forums. To delete information that explains how these rather large forums operate wouldn't be in the best intrests of information preservation.
  • Keep and do not trim. This is one of the most popular forums on the internet, and worth every word. If you don't like it that this article is longer than others on wikipedia, then add to those articles; don't take stuff away! I really don't think that it's bad that this article is 60k long, as 60kb is not that much when one looks at the immensity of wikpedia. And being able to extensively cover an internet forum shows how wikipedia can do stuff a paper encyclopedia could never get close to.-PlasmaDragon 15:22, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Terrapin

You are NOT to unilaterally and pre-emptively perform a merge-redirect (Or rather, in your case, a simple redirect) on this article until AT LEAST the five-day VfD discussion period is over. My clock shows four days. Furthermore, no consensus has been made at all, and any such discussion will then belong on the talk pages. --Golbez 02:03, Oct 17, 2004 (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.
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