Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crystal Palace (chat site)

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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 No consensus; defaults to keep. Merge may or may not be preferable. Ral315 (talk) 16:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Crystal Palace (chat site)

A "talker" community of questionable notability. The assertions of notability made in the article (50 users at once) are fairly weak in and of themselves; we wouldn't let a niche IRC network of 50 users create an article on Wikipedia without exceptional additional circumastances, and I see this as being no different. A positive: the addition of the article seems to have brought several enthusiastic new editors to Wikipedia. The negative: these new editors brought some of the "politics" of the talker with them, and an edit war largely consiting of inneundo and arguing over minutae has commenced. (There's a request for protection in process, amazingly.) So, in short--not notable and somewhat toxic to the community. Tom Lillis 03:25, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I offer the following addenda to my initial nomination. It would appear that I wasn't sufficiently clear with my reasoning:
1.) The nomination is made as a litmus test regarding the possible scaling back of the unusually large amount of information we have about talkers. The combined material from these articles approaches the size of World War II-- a fact that I find strange.
2.) The size of each individual community suggests to me that, while talkers as a phenomenon are certainly worthy of appropriately thorough documentation, different articles containing exhaustive and complete details these communities is probably not valuable. That is not to say that I don't value completeness--I simply don't believe that the factual material would be appropriately encyclopedic. Continuing...
3.) Much of the factual material seems to consist of the discussion of the internal politics of the talker. The interpersonal machinations of small, little-heard of groups are, as far as I can tell, neither notable nor encyclopedic. If we aren't accepting biographies of local political candidates in jurisdictions many times larger than the entirety of the talker universe, then I can't justify the inclusion of details of the talkers' politics.
4.) Many of the factual claims made in the articles--not just the politics but also some of the statistical information--are almost inherently unverifiable. The politics are without substantive, neutral documentation or significant public record. I suspect that may be additional support for my belief that the material itself is neither substantive nor significant.
5.) A point of policy: the behavior and motivations of the involved editors can, in fact, be used in consideration of whether or not an article should be deleted. I refer you to WP:POINT and other materials relating to "bad faith" edits and bad faith actions. It's one of the Golden Rules of Wikipedia to assume good faith! I always try to assume good faith. But it is extremely difficult to assume good faith when the first actions of a new editor or new editors is to angrily declare expertise and an inalienable right to have the final word on an article based on that declaration. The concept is further strained when that editor quickly defaults to a last-resort administrative procedure--a request for protection--to achieve that final word. It's borderline "gaming the system," which is almost the exact opposite of displaying newcomer traits and casts a pallor of bad faith over the entire affair.
6.) The policies are important, but the golden rule for inclusion is this: "Would this same type of material normally be found in a print encyclopedia?" The answer is no, not unless we were discussing the most esoteric single-subject encyclopedia in existence--"The Encyclopedia of Internet Chat Mechanisms," or something.
My talk page is always open for civil conversation about my editorial motives or the lack thereof. Tom Lillis 10:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete - I originally created the article as part of my series on the history of talkers, with the asserted notoriety in relation to the conversial elements of this talker. However, in retrospect, having an individual article purely to document controversies is something that I think is probably not a good idea. I have been considering merging the controversies in to Planes of Existence (talker) for some time, as was suggested by a number of users (indeed, some suggested merely documenting important events of talkers in to one article, which has merit). I did try to redirect this article and merge it so as to avoid an edit war, but this did not work and have stopped editing due to the 3RR rule. It seems understandably that the owner of this particular talker does not want to have an article created about them for what they perceive to be an attack page, and there have been irreconcilable issues with regards to resolving its WP:POV. The talker itself asserts no claims to notoriety. Its main page has an alexa rank of over 5 million, it was never the most popular talker in history (indeed, never in the top 10), was not the first to do anything and is not unique in any way. Whilst there are assertions that it was the first to combine talker and muds, this is not true. TinyMUD was in fact the first to do this, in 1989, 7 years before this talker was created, when they created MUSH. Other than the many controversies surrounding this particular talker, it has no assertions to notoriety. I do feel rather sheepish for nominating an article that I created for deletion, but I also feel that this is a good way to resolve disputes and hopefully stop the plague of vandalism that has hit this and related pages in the past few days. I would have suggested merge, but as all of the notable things about this talker are listed elsewhere, there is no longer any point to it. Hence I would like to suggest an outright delete. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 03:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: the creator of this entry created the entry in bad faith. He admitedly never visited the talker, posted very negative POV information (check the very early history of edits, for example!), and he created this without knowledge and permission the owner of the chat. Once the entry was discovered, though, the community has made great strides towards making the page better!Blackcat55 00:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Response: There was nothing bad faith about it. It was the 6th talker article that I created, and I included it as a link to the others. Yes, *EARLY* versions were somewhat non-neutral, as I had limited sources. If Crystal Palace had an actual usable website that had information on it, then I would have been able to have done a better job of it. That's not my fault. You must always WP:AGF with everything. If I had created this, as you claim, as an "attack page" then why did nobody notice it before? Why is it that those early edits, which I had 50 people look at, weren't noticed as there being anything wrong with them? And why is it that I went to such lengths to make things as accurate as possible, and to preserve arguments for both sides, if I was trying to make it out as an attack? The reality is that before all of the anon editors came out, it WAS a neutral page. It wasn't a complete page, but it was a neutral page. The reality is that by removing the sourced POV side, they actually made it both WP:NOR original research as well as failing to conform to the WP:POV neutral point of view. This is the problem here. You can't just get it in to a case of "he said she said" kind of nonsense. You have to have actual sources. This is the problem that these new editors don't seem to understand. The article WAS neutral. Now it is nothing but an advertisement and is totally biased. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 12:18, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Keep - crystal palace is just another talker. However, it has survived for over a decade and is perhaps one of the most popular talkers in existence right now. 68.83.85.175 04:06, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep or Merge -
The other talker pages I referenced before have been merged or deleted (or in the process of such). Therefore, my stance that all these pages should be treated equally requires me to change my vote to 'merge'. For historical purposes, those articles were:
  • Foothills (talker) - which is 1 paragraph long and claims it averages 10-15 users at a time (and is somehow "the 4th most popular in the world" at the same time? How can that be if CP at 50 isn't in the top 10?)
  • Resort (talker) - 1 paragraph and claims "20-40 users online" at any time.
  • Crossroads (chat site) - not especially notable and closed 8 years ago.
  • Lintilla (talker) - much longer article, but only reached "40 users at any one time". Somehow, this claims to be the most popular adult talker of all time, even though Crystal Palace is much more popular today.
  • Ncohafmuta - not especially notable for much of anything at all.
  • Planes of Existence (talker) - although once very popular, for most of its existence had only a handfull of users.
-- Shinmawa 21:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Weak delete. While the controversy involved is interesting, and Shinmawa makes a point, I'm going to make a subjective call here and say that regardless of any outside Alexa-ish measures, 50-person concurrency is just not all that impressive. Mo0[talk] 06:41, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I was directed back here to look at new information on the nomination, but I still stand as saying this should be either deleted or merged with other articles on the same topic. If we remove web forums that boast of 500 members, why should we keep a chat room that boasts of 50? It's all about consistency here. Mo0[talk] 15:14, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
    • 50 concurrent users, not 50 total users. The owner claims to have over two thousand active users right now, and tens of thousands of unique accounts having been created over its history. 68.83.85.175 15:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Whoa, talk about completely misreading numbers. O_o Point taken. At the same time, though, "having logged in within the past few months" isn't my definition of active. Neopets uses similar logic to inflate their activity numbers. I'm always a bit wary of a site where only 1% of their "active users" are actually online at any given time. It makes the "active users" count feel inflated. Mo0[talk] 18:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: Okay 1) Surfers (talker) is the most popular talker right now, and is the most popular talker of all time, with a peak of over 500 users on at a time (not 50, 500), which is a confirmed fact. 2) Lintilla (talker) had 40 users per talker - 7 talkers means 280 users total, and it also had a large number of spin offs, hence making the community much bigger than one which was just 50. It also had a great influence on other talkers and generally. I just thought that I'd point ou these factually inaccurate assertions that were being made there. Besides which, based on user numbers, lintilla isn't sufficiently notable to warrant its own article. Its notability is with its influence. There is a great consistency with what I did. I merged sleepy's in to lintilla in spite of sleepy's being more popular, because lintilla's claims to notoriety are larger. However, as I said elsewhere, I am more than happy to merge the lot in to one article. Just as long as issues of historical importance aren't wiped. Do you want me to pretend that Surfers didn't steal Foothills code, and that that action created ew-too? Want me to pretend that things like that didn't happen just because you think that it makes things seem nicer? Want me to pretend that these holes didn't exist in the codes? Want me to pretend that nobody noticed them and that the rapid decline of both talkers and user numbers didn't happen, or wasn't based on that? Perhaps you want me to edit the Michael Jackson article and get rid of all of the claims about child molestation too? After all, he was found not guilty, wasn't he? Why should we list it in an encyclopaedia? The answer is very simple - because it made a difference. And because whether you think that Michael Jackson molested those kids or not, the reality is that he really was accused of it, and that it really did influence a lot of things. And, wait, do you want me to go around and say that Adolf Hitler wasn't believed to be responsible for the holocaust? After all, that's not 100% proven either. It might have been Herman Goerring, or someone else. What we have to do with issues like this is to write them, yes, and then present them from an informative point of view. Not including them is just plain silly. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 07:37, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: Surfers does not have over 500 users today. By comparison, 'Crystal Palace' is just as popular, and often more so. For proof, simply visit | Surfer user count and | Crystal Palace user count. You will notice that Surfer's peak is barely over half that of Crystal Palace's peak! In fact, on December 5th, 2005, the lowest user count on Crystal Palace is just under half the peak of Surfer's! Looking at the extemely low standard deviation of Surfer's user count (4.3), one could easily suggest that a core group of 20 users connect and remain online throughout the day. By comparison, Crystal Palace's standard deviation of user count (12.4, three times that of Surfer's!) is evident to the fact that users come and go throughout the day and are typically engaged in active conversation. 68.83.85.175 13:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. nn. And yeah I agree that we need to scale these articles on chat rooms back a bit. Web directory-ish. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 11:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. This talker is definitely among the most stable and popular talkers in the entire (short) history of talkers, especially out of all of the talkers that Zordrac has written about. If we delete this page, then we should delete a host of entries (see Shinmawa's post above) representing relatively insignificant talkers. 66.101.11.58 13:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge this, and all the others Shinmawa lists, into an appropriate article summarising the various talkers out there. I can see no reason to store all this relatively useless information (per nom), and all the useful information on all these non-notable examples of a notable practice could easily fit into a single article. — Haeleth Talk 13:59, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep or merge ALL of these petty talker entries. There's no denying that Crystal Palace is one of the more popular talkers out there (it seems to be the most popular today compared to the other telnet-based talkers 'Zordrac' has written about based on user count statistics gleaned from neutral third parties). Crystal Palace has made an impact on the talker community -- debatable if it's good or bad -- and warrants at least mentioning. If it is to be deleted, it should at least be highlighted somewhere as one of the most popular talkers. Obviously, the more popular the talker, the more vulnerable it is to intertalker politics, baseless allegations, and etc., as is witnissed even here with this talker being absurdly recommended for deletion while many other far less popular talkers have gotten relatively little attention from the community.216.158.57.50 14:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete this is below threshhold. Eusebeus 22:07, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep For several reasons.
1.) It has survived and thrived for over a decade as one of the most popular internet telnet chats around.
2.) It combined the ease of talkers with a great roleplaying atmosphere.
3.) Several thousand people have called this talker their home at various points.
4.) To delete this page and not delete all of the other talker pages would be a gross violation of wikipedia's goals.
5.) The talker itself is obviously notable - why else would it draw this much attention in just a few days after this entry was created?

Blackcat55 00:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Merge as Haeleth suggested. Johnleemk | Talk 09:20, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge per Haeleth. Believe that's what I've been getting at all along. Tom Lillis 09:33, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep CP is distinct from most talkers in that it has been around for so long and is strongly supportive of roleplaying. 128.175.215.118 15:06, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that what people fail to recognise here is that a merge means that we are either biased in favour of CP, purely because they advertised people to come here and vote, which isn't the way that Wikipedia's voting process is supposed to work. This is supposed to be votes by neutral people who are not involved in it. The term "meat puppets" is used for this strategy, and ordinarily admins ignore votes made in this manner.

One big reason why not to merge is because CP is equally notable to an awful lot of places. I don't know every talker, but my understanding is that its in the order of 100 which are roughly equally as notable. Why pick one ahead of any other? I could just pluck Ancient Realms out for an example (one that I don't think deserves its own article). Ancient Realms was about from 1992 to 1996, started on ew-too but converted to nuts, and was seen as an ambassador to talkers. It was one of the first talker hosts, predating talker.com by 4 years, but it didn't charge anyone to use its space. It was run on an education server, and worked to educate students, using talkers as a medium. It influenced most of the big talkers that came out afterwards, including Oceanhome, Crossroads and Ncohafmuta. But it was never popular, never having more than 30 or 40 users on at a time. And it closed after just 4 years. The server stayed open until 1998 but without the talker on there (just other people's talkers). In a very technical sense, it was the first ever multiple worlds talker - in the sense that it called all of the talkers on its network "realms". It also used NUTS 3's linking code to link all of the talkers together. Ancient Realms still exists today, in a sense, although the original talker is long gone. It has a MUD, a MUSH and 3 educational talkers, catering for primary school aged kids.

Now that is a talker of equal notoriety to CP. Not notable enough for its own article though.

If we vote "keep" on this, then we have 100 talkers listed. If we vote "merge" then we have the talker page looking longer than anything ever imagined.

Indeed, I don't see how anyone can possibly suggest that CP is more notable than Iron Rose, the forefather of BDSM talkers.

Do we keep going on forever? Or do we appease people just because they happened to come here to vote, and just because they wrote on their message boards to come to wikipedia to vandalise pages and vote to keep this and delete poe. Is that how the process works? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 12:33, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Zordrac -- To my knowledge, there have been no, none, zero, zip messages on any message board to either vandalize the pages here or vote one way or the other. There was a single message announcing the page's existence and the thoughts of CP's owner about its veracity (which did NOT include a plea to vandalize the page). There was a followup message by me specifically asking people to NOT vandalize the page. There have absolutely NO OTHER messages regarding this page whatsoever, yet you continue to make these accusations all over Wikipedia. A far more likely scenario is this: People have been getting the old announcements as they log in. Its probable that these people didn't see the original announcement until days after it was made since a lot of people don't come online every day. They go to the web address in the announcement (the link to the article's main page). At the TOP of that page, in bold letters is the mention of the AFD and a link to THIS page. It doesn't take much to see that those people are simply clicking on the provided link and voting. This does NOT, repeat NOT, mean there's any orchestrated effort to get anyone to vote one way or the other. Unless you have some actual proof (like the text of such an announcement and where it can be found), I must request that you immediately cease these bad faith accusations. I'm NOT saying that these people who came here only to vote should be given equal treatment. They, of course, should not. I'm only saying that, to my knowledge, they are not coming here because they were told to vote. -- Shinmawa 19:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
      • So you actually deny it now? There were quite a few users who admitted it in messages on Wikipedia. This is ridiculous that you deny something that is admitted. Besides which, even if what you claim is true, advertising for this AFD on the talker itself says very clearly the intention. It is an orchestrated attack, of the kind that often happens in talkers. "Out of loyalty to Crystal Palace, do what is right" is effectively what is being said. Your claims are ludicruous. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 04:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
My only claim is that other than the messages which I described above, I personally not seen any messages regarding this article. I've not seen a single message that does anything like you describe. My inclination is that YOU haven't seen any either. I've also not seen any of these admissions of which you speak. Therefore, my claims are NOT ludicrous, unless you are now claiming to be an expert on what I have and haven't seen. If you can provide concrete examples, I'll look into it. However, all you've done is make accusations without any evidence. I'm asking you to either provide some evidence (such as an actual message or a location where one can be found), or cease making accusations. -- Shinmawa 00:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
That is not being at all fair, Zordy. I said there was no encourgement by anyone to vandalize anything that I've seen and you've yet to produce any evidence of such. I'm not defending anyone's vandalism. -- Shinmawa 00:20, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete not notable, void of encyclopedic value --Mecanismo 15:09, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete nn.  Grue  16:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

By the way, last version edited by me, prior to vandalism etc, was this one [1]. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 04:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I thought that I'd point that out so that it is *CRYSTAL CLEAR* to all voters that the article, prior to changes made by anons, was neutral. It was incomplete, and some things were not 100% factual. Whilst I appreciate the improvements with that regards, it has changed from something that was neutral to something that is a blatant advertisement. They also got rid of all claims to notoriety. Whilst the article as I wrote it did have claims to notoriety, the article as it stands now does not. That is it quite simply. Their user levels are insufficient to claim notoriety per Wikipedia standards. The controversies are sufficiently notable. If they want us to pretend that the controversies didn't happen, then that's fine, but then the article can't exist. Simple as that. There's no debate about this. No current talkers are sufficiently notable for their own article. And ridiculous notions such as CP being "the most popular talker of all time" are just stupid. Unless they had 1,000 users on at once for 4 years, they are no competition to the top 3. Its very biased POV editing with no concept of fact or reality. A lot of talkers have been written about in the media. A lot have been the subject of newspaper articles and PC Gamer magazine and the like. But CP has not. Lintilla has, Surfers has, Resort has, Foothills has. CP has not. It can't get much simpler than that really. And this whole thing has turned in to a whole "my talker is better than yours" incident which is just plain stupid.

The very definition of meat puppets is what has happened here. There was one initial editor, who was genuine, and he then got a bunch of others to come along to help out. Ergo, they cannot be considered to be neutral, and they should be considered to all be one voice, per the standards in meat puppets and sock puppets guidelines. Now, if neutral people honestly feel that this needs to be kept, then that is another matter entirely. When I wrote it I thought that it might not be suitably notable, and it turns out I was right. Not to mention that the guy who owns the talker doesn't even have a real web page, and doesn't want anyone to write anything about him at all (The entire point to this bunch of attacks on me and this article). Other than how this talker has affected others, which is solely in relation to the controversies, there is absolutely zero influence on anything. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 04:28, 9 December 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.