Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crime Expo SA

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 no consensus, even after discounting the repeated keeps by a single editor. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 06:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Crime Expo SA

Non-notable website Guinnog 01:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete soap box spam --Xrblsnggt 02:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete may eventually draw enough attention to iself to be notable, but as of now there's no reason for an article about it here. InvictaHOG 03:11, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

• Do NOT delete article. This is not a spoap box. Administrator input required. Article should be reformatted to suit requirements if areas of dispute is clearly indicated. Sufficient media attention was already received to be notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.153.175.51 (talk • contribs) 05:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Guinnog, if it isn't notable then why has it gotten media attention? --HResearcher 07:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nominator and User:InvictaHOG. JIP | Talk 07:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Invictahog and JIP, the nominator's reason is irrelevant because it's not true. Crime Expo SA is notable per it's media coverage. --HResearcher 10:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Subject seems to satisy WP:WEB (criteria 1) as well as WP:V and WP:RS, though article really, really needs a rewrite. --Daduzi ^talk 08:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as valid stub, but as said, needs some copyediting... rootology (T) 08:38, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and Merge to South_Africa#Crime. Website has received some initial publicity, but it's only a month old, and it reamins to be seen if the notability will be durable. By merging to South_Africa#Crime, the text will come to the atention of many other editors, helping to ensue a higher quality of writing. If the crime section then gets too big, split out to something like "Crime in South Africa" before creating a specific article oin this one website. --BrownHairedGirl 11:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - it's a soap box. Páll ^{(Die pienk olifant)} 13:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• keep obvious media attention and mentions as listed in its links section. --zero faults ^{|sockpuppets|} 14:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete this article. Wipe it off the face of the Earth, and list crimeexposa.org as official spam not welcome on Wikipedia (such as those Nigerian mooo.com sites). South African editors are tired of this nonsense. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen)(vote placed on his behalf, at his request, by Guinnog 15:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC))

Comment. Guinnog, that is not a valid vote. If Zyxoas wants to make input he can do it himself. --HResearcher 21:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

See my user talk for his explanation of why he couldn't do it himself, and his request to me to vote on his behalf. --Guinnog 21:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I think it will be up to the person administering this Afd to decide whether Zyxoas opinion will count. Thanks --HResearcher 07:09, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - While it has received some attention, its exceedingly doubtful that it will remain notable for long. I second the suggestion by BrownHairedGirl above. Impi 16:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The listed sources establish notability. The article has textual problems, but that's grounds for editing, not deletion. And quite frankly, Zyxoas' response makes me want to see the article expanded, not deleted; I want to know what it is about this website, or about the South African culture, or the combination of the two, that produces such a passionate reaction. Kickaha Ota 16:13, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - I agree that this has gotten enough attention to merit at least the brief article that it has. --Brianyoumans 19:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, that's the problem; there can never be anything else beyond a URL and the (2?) media mentions the URL has had. Unencyclopedic. This is not a listings service. --Guinnog 21:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
    • What notability criteria does it fail? --Daduzi ^talk 21:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
      • WP:WEB, I don't think it has had "multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself". I think this Wikipedia article (very poor though it is) is an attempt to bolster the credibility of a fairly new scare site. I don't think we should be doing that. --Guinnog 21:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
        • How do the BBC, CNN, the Cape Times ([1], subscription required) and the largest online new source in South Africa not count as multiple non-trivial published works? --Daduzi ^talk 22:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

If you read the CNN and the BBC articles, you will see that they are almost identical, no doubt because they will have been drafted from the same Reuters article. Without having paid to look at the Cape Times article, I would guess it will be the same Reuters article a third time. I would look for more than this before we should have an article on it. Wait a month or two and see what happens. You should have no problem getting more than this (effectively) one news report of a new website by then. Or it will have sunk without a trace, as a lot of these things do. It is so easy to set up a web site, we need to be especially careful in applying our guidelines to our articles on them.

I also, as I said, get the queasy feeling that Wikipedia is being used here, to garner respectability for this scare site. Transwiki to Wikinews perhaps? --Guinnog 22:11, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't describe the BBC and CNN articles as "nearly identical", and it's worth pointing out that the BBC article does not credit Reuters. Incidentally, I was wrong about the Cape Times article and the article (which does credit Reuters) is avaliable here. In any case, whether or not the original source was the same is irrelevant, what's important is that 2 major news organisations and assorted newspapers and lesser news organisations saw fit to report on the subject. As for the issue of garnering respectibility, I'd agree that it's a concern with the article as it stands but being the fact that an article may be written in a promotional way isn't grounds to delete it, but can be grounds to extensively rewrite it.--Daduzi ^talk 23:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment. I'm not sure that "the queasy feeling that Wikipedia is being used here" is a factor we should be considering. Either the subject of an article is notable or it isn't. If it's sufficiently notable, then it should be covered. If we start to say 'Well, yes, it's notable, but it's notable for the wrong reasons', then we set ourselves up for selection bias. Yes, we often delete articles for being advertisements. I've certainly rejected dozens of AfC articles for that reason. But when an article is deleted on that ground (as opposed to being rewritten), it's not just because it's an advertisement; it's because it's an advertisement of a non-notable subject -- in other words, it's an attempt to use Wikipedia to help the subject become notable. If the subject is already notable, then we rewrite, not delete. Otherwise, every article about a company, product or service on Wikipedia would become an instant candidate for deletion, since undoubtedly those articles help bring attention to the subjects of the articles. So in this case, if the website is notable (and it appears to be), then the article shouldn't be deleted just because it may have been written with the intent to draw people to the website. If that intent shows up in the article itself, then edit or delete the offending portions of the article. Kickaha Ota 05:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, sure. As I (and several others) have said, I think its current notability is marginal at best, and this Wikipedia article is an attempt to raise its profile and make it notable. If we delete the POV from the article, we are left with a URL, two external links (which read like they were based on the same Reuters article, or maybe the same press release, and so are counted by me as one), and a summary of the one-man site's sensationalistic content. Not a very encyclopedic article!

I also count the website's novelty against it; as I said, why not delete for now and see if it attracts any other comment in the coming months, or if it sinks like a stone as many of these yellow press sites do? I agree with you that if the article is allowed to stay on Wikipedia it will have to be very extensively edited to conform to NPOV. --Guinnog 12:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

"Why not delete for now and see if it attracts any other comment in the coming months?" Because Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. What needs to be established is if there are sufficient verifiable sources to claim notability now, if the website generates no further press then the article can remain a discussion of the one issue that did generate press. And, no, the article would not just be a URL, external links and a summary of content; if that were all that could be written about there'd be no possible claim to notability as no major news organisations would have written about such a topic. The fact that news organisations have written about it, however, means that there is something that can be added to the article. I have to ask, if you have such an issue with the article's current format why not simply be bold and write your own, less POV version? --Daduzi ^talk 13:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, we obviously have different views on the "not a crystal ball" thing. I would interpret it (and this was what I meant above) as meaning we should delete the article for now, until or unless it attracts more coverage and comment, and thus more notability. You have a different view; that's fine, I suppose that's what these AfD discussions are about.

As to being bold, I don't think you'll find many editors who will put a lot of work into rewriting an article that they have proposed for deletion. If the proposal was successful, it would be an awful waste of time, wouldn't it? But don't worry, even if this proposal is unsuccessful I will be watching it closely and, yes, my first action would be to completely rewrite it to conform with NPOV, MoS etc. I hope you will join me in this, should my first wish (to expunge what I stil think is a bid for notability from our encyclopedia) be unsuccessful. --Guinnog 14:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Guinnog, you say: "I don't think you'll find many editors who will put a lot of work into rewriting an article that they have proposed for deletion". But you nominated this for deletion and then say "my first action would be to completely rewrite it". And you are strongly arguing against notability, yet this subject has been covered by CNN and BBS. --HResearcher 15:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I went and looked at the site. It has a fair amount of material on it - probably several hundred messages from crime victims, plus lots of statistics, other stuff. There was a list of the most recent reader comments, and there had been about 10 in the last 6 hours. The crime victim messages each had from 50 to (the highest I saw) 2000 page reads. A message from the site owner claimed that many recent victim letters had not been put up yet due to a website move.--Brianyoumans 19:24, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Comment If you go to the section "Popular content" and "All times" on the Crime Expo Website you will get an indication of the quantity times an article was read. Take the article: "Young male attacked on his small holding in Johannesburg". It had 7447 reads when this comment was posted. This is only 1 article, and there are hundreds. The website must have significant support.--Jackes 09:31, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep This article must stay here. This website has achieved a lot in a very small time, and is very notable. Other websites refer to the Crime Expo Website. As an example a well established trade Union in South Africa "Solidarity" have a link to Crime Expo. They will not have links to SPAM websites. Click hereto go to the page that display the link.--Jackes 09:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep The content of the Crime Expo article can be edited / modified to improve the article. More information can be added, such as the fact that the South African tourist industry does not like the website + their reason(s) for it.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackes (talk • contribs) (second 'keep' from this user)

• DeleteWikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news station. The article describes the site in question as a "place for victims to tell their stories." That makes it basically a blog. There are about 700 G-hits. Although it has achieved some notoriety, this may be temporary. It has not been in existence long enough to establish notability. The attestations to notability in the article at the time of me writing this show that it a sensation-- for the present. They do not demonstrate sufficient notability to meet WP:WEB. We will see. For now, the creator should park a copy in his user space and try again if the site continues to become more well known. Cheers. :) Dlohcierekim 21:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news station. Wikipedia have articles on news stations such as BBC, CNN & Reuters. By witing an article on these, Wikipedia does not become a news station? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackes (talk • contribs) (third 'keep' from this user)

• Keep Dlohcierekim, your argument is misleading. There is more than 1 search engine on which info can be found. Then you can enter "Crime Expo SA" as well as "Crime Expo South Africa", or just "Crime Expo". All these refer to articles on the same subject. A Google search on just "crime expo" reveils about 15200 hits. [2], As an example not all the hits uses SA or South Africa, such as the Google results that linked to a political party in South Africa. This means that the website even received political attention [3], a amazing achievement, that shows notability.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackes (talk • contribs) (fourth 'keep' from this user)

• Keep Dlohcierekim, how many G-Hits would you consider to give notability? Is 700 hits not sufficient. It appear to me as if it a considerable quantity.--Jackes 09:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC) (fifth 'keep' from this user, who has made 12 edits, all in relation to this article. First edit summary was "(Let's test the impartiality of Wikipedia.)"

Response to User:Jakes. No, that is not sufficeint G-Hits. Show me where this article meets WP:WEB, and I will reconsider my vote. You have voted at least four times now. Please stop doing that. Anything after your one and only "vote" should be captioned as a "comment"(in bold) and offset with a colon. Also, please sign your comments with ~~~~ so we know who is commenting. Cheers. :) Dlohcierekim 17:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment I have about 8,000 G-hits and I am certainly not notable. Cheers. :) Dlohcierekim 17:27, 8 August 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.