Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blogging Tories

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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 delete. —Cleared as filed. 13:22, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Note: The closing admin determined that they had read the deletion debate wrong, and that their initial close was inaccurate. As such, the article has been undeleted. Phil Sandifer 17:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blogging Tories

This article was marked for AfD by an anon for reasons that seems to be making a point, but then blanked (apparently the anony thought better of it). But the AfD tag was still on the page when I went over to see if it was worthy of being deleted, and I think it is. So I'll save the anonymous guy the trouble of being branded a point'er and nominate it myself. It's a not extraordinary blog group, and though it has some interesting members it doesn't make the group notable in of itself. Delete. Lord Bob 22:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Strong Keep. Blogging Tories is an invaluable resource for Conservatives and politically active Canadians, this is not just some random personal blog; it is a huge online community with thousands of readers and contributors.
  • Keep. How can one "new media" delete references to another "new media". Blogs are useless? As opposed to anything that has been posted to the internet dating back to bulletin boards? Blogging is part of the future of the internet, get use to it.
  • Keep. Both Progressive Bloggers and Blogging Tories are notable by any definition other than a US-is-the-centre-of-the-universe one. I'm personally a little tired of the deletists around here. User:Dr.Dawg17:25 15 November 2005 [DST]
    vote actually by 209.217.124.169 (talk · contribs), has eleven edits, ten to AfDs, one to this article. Lord Bob 22:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Has notable members and has a reasonable level of readership. Capitalistroadster 22:56, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep notable in Canada. Please be aware of systemic bias that has been identified in Wikipedia against non-American entries.--Simon.Pole 23:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete This, as well as Progressive Bloggers is not notable, this is no conspiracy theory, these don't belong on wikipedia. -Skrewler 23:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete. not notable, vanity advertisement. --Timecop 23:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Not notable. Incognito 23:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete. Not notable whatsoever. --Impi.za 00:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Systemic bias in favor of all things internet-related has been identified on Wikipedia also. Countless flash movies, personal websites, blogs and myspace users get articles written about them, when they generally shouldn't. Individual politicans may be encyclopedic, but their blogs rarely are. This article is about a website that aggregates content from a bunch of different blogs. Surely the "notability" of a few noteworhty politicans does not automagically transfer that far up the chain? What's next, an article about the physical server that this website runs on?
  • For those that care about verifiability (which I believe we frequently lose sight of), this article has no references. If anyone can find references to make this verifiable, please put them in the article, not on the Afd page. People reading the article need to be able to see why this website, out of the millions, appears in an encyclopedia. Friday 00:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Surely we don't have articles on myspace users? Just for being myspace users? -R. fiend 01:59, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Well, we shouldn't. They get deleted easily when they get noticed. Of course, sometimes junk articles don't get noticed... Friday 03:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. -- Femmina 00:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep Nascent group in Canadian politics, particularly with elections imminent. Jtmichcock 00:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, American or Canadian, they aren't notable. -- Kjkolb 00:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete as blogcruft, and I say this as neither an American or a Canadian. I'm leaning towards individual country "blogosphere" (shudder) articles as weak keeps, but any subset NO unless there's a damn good reason. - Randwicked 01:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Unless someone can convince me why not to, I'm going to vote delete. Don't we have a policy on self-published authors? -R. fiend 01:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Notable right-wing blogging site, counterpart to Progressive Bloggers. Luigizanasi 02:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Needs to be treated equivalently to Progressive Bloggers. Though my own vote is personally to keep, they either need to both be kept or both be deleted. Any final result which saw one kept and the other deleted would be entirely unacceptable. Accordingly, they should really both be considered in a single vote. Bearcat 02:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Comment. I completely support what Bearcat is suggesting. Anything else would amount to Wikipedia taking sides. Luigizanasi 02:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
That does sound reasonable, yes. My only qualm is a vague uneasiness about adding an article to an AfD well into a vote, but it does seem to be the most fair way in this case. Lord Bob 03:10, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete 65.34.232.136 02:57, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    user has just nineteen edits, fifteen of which are to AfDs. Bearcat 03:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Non-notable. *drew 03:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. One of Wikipedia's recognised strengths is that it is up-to-date, especially on recent phenomena. We have articles on every single imaginable video game, most music albums you care to mention, practically every single piece of software out there, a number of usenet newsgroups, Wikipedia did better than the regular news media on recent events such as the London bombings and Hurricane Katrina, and so on. Where else but Wikipedia can people find hopefully neutral information on the recent and increasingly important phenomenon of blogging, especially political blogs, which are not neutral by their very nature. NPOV articles on Blogging groups (not necessarily individual blogs, mind you), perform a vital service to the world at large. Luigizanasi 04:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Nope, sorry, "blogs" are not worth a shit in the real world. JacksonBrown 05:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Commet Please note that User:Timecop has proclaimed a "War on Blogs" on his user page. His user page also says that he is a leader of the Gay Nigger Association of America. The GNAA is a notorious group of organzied trolls on the internet, who actually forced Slashdot to go their original karma system because of unrelenting spam. Looks like they're targetting Wikipedia now. Great. --Simon.Pole 09:27, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Comment This definately a GNAA exercise. User:JacksonBrown who voted delete above had a huge GNAA slogan on his user page that was removed by administators (you can see it here). I don't know what else to say. The GNAA is organizing a mass deletion of blog-related entries. All blog-relate vfd's should be stopped immediately.--Simon.Pole 09:51, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You know, I thought it was a bit odd how many sockpuppets were kicking around with nothing but AFD votes on blog articles to their names. I really should've been digging harder. All votes which are identifiably GNAA sockpuppets are to be considered struck from this debate at once. Bearcat 10:52, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. No systematic bias, we should delete all pointless American blogs too. —Cleared as filed. 11:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Keep. Notable. Also encyclopedic by viture of its having notable participants and by virtue of its being a subject that many people would want to learn about. 11:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete blogs are not generally worth encyclopedic treatment. Dottore So 11:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Who cares about crappy blogs? Waste of bandwidth. --86.2.56.178 12:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Soft Delete The article wasn't worth mentioning from the beginning -- and I don't think much encyclopediac use will ever come of it. --Depakote 12:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete blogcruft — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 14:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • sockpuppet Dawg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.217.124.14 (talk • contribs) 09:34, November 16, 2005
      • Comment: Who is Dawg? Above IP address has 4 edits, 3 of them to this AFD page, yet calls me a sockpuppet. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 15:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
        • Perhaps he's saying he's a sock-puppet. Honesty is the best policy... Lord Bob 18:22, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
        • Judging from his edit history, he's an overzealous newbie who thinks he's helping. Dawg/John/whatever your name is, would you please not do this? A contributor's edit history has to be reviewed before they can be tagged as a sockpuppet; you can't just jump to conclusions or tag people just because they disagreed with your vote. Leave it to the experienced contributors to make that call, okay? (Also, please don't sign your posts with a username you haven't registered; either register a username and stick with it, or sign your posts ~~~~ so we can see your IP number.) Bearcat 20:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • You got the "newbie" thing right. Dr.Dawg is my usual blog-handle--I put my real name in here out of reflex once or twice, but I've voted only once, so "sockpuppet" is a little strong, since no deception was meant. If I can register "Dr.Dawg," I'll do it, but I'm pink enough to have to admit I don't know how! Honest enough?
      • There should be a "Create account/login" link in the top right corner of your screen. Click on that and follow the process there. Bearcat 22:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
        • Thank you. All is now correct. Now, where were we? Dr.Dawg 17:39, 16 November 2005 (DST)
  • Strong Keep. The point of an online encyclopedia is to be a resource for more than just the things you would find in a regular encyclopedia. I checked out the website, and they have a sizable readership, so it seems they aren't some small group that is just wasting space on the Wiki - this belongs here. Keep it. John Hawke 19:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    vote actually by 134.153.184.163 (talk · contribs). Lord Bob 19:27, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep.These bloggers are committed to exposing information omitted by the Candian main stream media. Many of the members of the blog roll are Members of Parliament. These citizens are on the forefront of the new age of democracy in Canada. Slider!
    unsigned vote by 24.57.81.147 (talk · contribs); no edit history prior to this AFD. Bearcat 21:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

16 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Strong Keep.An important part of the political landscape - just see the number of users - Davey
  • Strong Keep. This blogroll is important to Canadians. User:'Expert' Tom12:56 16 November 2005 [DST]
    user's first edit. Lord Bob 00:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete - Not notable. More importantly, I just wanted to point to this post on a blog, which, in my view, contravenes Wikipedia's no sock puppet policy. It may be unfairly influencing the balance of this conversation.
    unsigned vote by Dbarefoot, his ninth edit, even if he's right about the potential meatpuppet storm. Lord Bob 00:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • KEEP! - Important site to represent the Canadian Political Blogging world. It's very significant in how it effects the Canadian Political Atmosphere!--Frank TML93 01:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    user's first edit Bearcat 01:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. First thing, I can’t understand how someone can say the Blogging Tories are “not notable” when there are prominent Members of Canadian Parliament as part of the group. I think those people are grossly mischaracterizing the Blogging Tories or wrongly mistaking them as only being two or three random blogs. Blogging is fast becoming an important medium in politics and the Blogging Tories have become one of the largest forces in the Canadian political blogosphere. There are even numerous examples where they have had a direct impact in Canadian politics. There is no reason why an important website like the Blogging Tories shouldn’t be on Wikipedia.--Esto 02:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I think I know why people don't find the membership to be convincing. These people could be members of a local supper club too, right? Does that make the club significant? The blogging torries is a website who aggregrates content from people's blogs. Couldn't there be any number of such websites? What makes this one special? I could make a website tomorrow that aggregates content from these people's blogs. Their best claim to fame seems to be when newsworthy events happened which were leaked on the Internet. By having a connection to that leak, they claim they're significant. This is crazy. If I ran into Dick Cheney with my car and got my name in the news, do I deserve an encyclopedia article? Certainly not, and neither do the Blogging Tories. No disrepect meant to them or their politics; I'm strictly speaking about what does or does not belong in an encyclopedia. Friday (talk) 02:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • And on the stated grounds, this would be less notable than Daily Kos or The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler exactly why? Bearcat 03:19, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, you asked. Here: 227,000 vs 7,750,000 vs 595,000 google results for each respective group you listed. Which is precisely why they were NOT put up for AFD when I was scanning Category:Blogs for useless cruft. --Timecop 04:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
What part of "a bigger country can inherently generate more Google links than a smaller one can" implies that smaller countries should therefore be less entitled to Wikipedia coverage? Bearcat 04:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I lied. Rottweiler wasn't in [[:Category::Blogs]] which is why I missed it. --Timecop 04:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Other articles are not the concern here. Web stuff is overrepresented here at Wikipedia, so it's not surprising that unverifiable and insignificant websites sometimes have articles about them. Let's judge each article on its own merits, or maybe use the WP:WEB guideline for websites. To answer your specific question, Daily Kos appears to have significant traffic compared to the other ones, even if adjusted by a factor of 5 for the populartion difference between US and Canada. Friday (talk) 04:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
"A factor of 5" does not account for the population difference between the US and Canada. And the WP:WEB guideline quite specifically states that notability can be defined by Alexa rank OR other criteria of the type that have already been proven here, not Alexa AND other criteria. Bearcat 04:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, you're right. Call it a factor of 10 then. It still doesn't compare. I don't see how other criteria have "already been proven", per my above objections which have not been answered. Friday (talk) 04:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
For starters, as I've stated before, a larger country by definition generates a higher volume of Internet traffic than a smaller one, which is precisely why the notability of a website has to be defined by its own context. Argument by Internet traffic alone, by definition, is an assertion that Canadian stuff has less notability just because it's Canadian — the arguments are inseparable from each other, because Canada's smaller size means a site of Canadian-specific interest inherently can't generate the traffic to compete on raw numbers. And statistically, simply multiplying the lesser site's traffic volume by the population differential isn't a mathematically reliable comparison of influence. The questions of the site's influence in Canadian politics, its notable members, its media presence, etc. have already been answered numerous times. The only valid measure of influence is whether this and ProgBlog are as notable within Canadian politics as Daily Kos is within American politics. The contextual relationship has to be taken into account. Bearcat 04:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge with Canadian blogosphere, since I went through all of the links provided above, and I could not find any evidence that this site had any overwhelming influence in Canadian politics. That said, I believe the content does deserve a mention in the overall blogosphere site, since as a whole, it does possess more influence than in other countries. Titoxd(?!?) 04:43, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm willing for my suggestion to count as a merge as well if it helps build consensus. I don't believe this should have its own article, but it's possible it could be mentioned elsewhere. However, the article you've suggested as a merge target is on Afd also, and I believe it's original research. I wonder if Politics of Canada or Political Culture of Canada is a good place for this stuff. I still think whatever's used should be verifiable, though. Friday (talk) 05:09, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Organized deletion vandalism merits banning. --FOo 05:14, 17 November 2005 (UTC)'
    • Comment Please discount this vote on the pretext that the user is not evaluating VfDs on the basis of validity but on accusations of vandalism. --Veew 14:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. It's notable for anyone who's interested in Canadian blogging. -- The Invisible Hand 08:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    user's seventh edit. Lord Bob 08:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

WARNING - A cry for help was posted on a blog, requesting sockpuppets to vote keep on this article. This goes against Wikipedia's no sock puppet policy. It may be unfairly inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Blogging_Tories&action=edit&section=1fluencing the balance of this conversation. And User:Timecop/The war on blogs is doing the same thing on the other side of the debate, marshalling a concerted group of unestablished Wikipedia users to bloc vote delete on blog-related articles in contravention of the same policy.

  • Cry for help has been removed to keep in accordance with Wikipedia's no sock puppet policy.
  • Its ridiculous to say that large blog groups like the Blogging Tories are not notable. Take this recent quote from the globe and mail talking about the upcoming election, "there are some who think the Internet and Internet blogs may play a bigger role." Blogging Tories is the biggest force there is in the Canadian political blogosphere, so at the very least, we should wait and see before we say it isn't notable.--Esto 19:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep notable. mennonot 11:31, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. I was in great doubt on this one, but it seems useful to me. Usually I vote for deletion on this kind of things, but if they actually achieved something (however left-wing I am), this may be kept. Nazgjunk - - Signing is for Whimps 20:47, 19 November 2005 (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.