Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cut-the-knot

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The result of the debate was speedy keep: Nomination withdrawn and nobody argues for deletion. – Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cut-the-knot

Does not meet any of the three criteria at WP:WEB. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a web directory. Could also be considered advertizing per the soapbox section of WP:NOT *Delete. -Halidecyphon 09:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC) :Changing my vote to no vote per SciAm award just added to the article. It now could be seen as satisfying WP:WEB, although personally I do not believe the spirit of that guidline is to copy every tech magazine's annual "best of the web" to wikipedia. - Halidecyphon 16:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I've researched this site better now and it's clear I was hasty and in the wrong. I'd like to change my vote to keep and withdraw my nomination. Sorry everyone for wasting your time. -Halidecyphon 20:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

• Strong keep. This is a fairly well know and long running mathematical website which has a useful focus for educational mathematics. Its referenced from about 30 wikipedia pages, it has 250,000 google hits (search for cut-the-knot.com not .org). It won a Scientific American Web Award in 2003. --Salix alba 11:27, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Over 100 articles link there. Edgar181 12:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Salix alba and Edgar181. I fully agree with Halidecyphon that we should not "copy every tech magazine's annual "best of the web" to wikipedia", but sometimes stuff gets selected for a good reason, and sometimes nobody's documented importance in other ways and such an award is the first verifiable distinction that gets added. Barno 20:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. A well-known and respected educational website, very frequently linked to from Wikipedia articles. Once upon a time someone misguidedly decided to consider those many links to be spam and started systematically deleting them, to the detriment of Wikipedia, until some of us stepped in and pointed out his error. Michael Hardy 21:04, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, keep. Dysprosia 21:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, as above. If it doesn't satisfy WP:WEB, that means that WP:WEB is wrong. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 22:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd like to qualify my comment a bit. I think my conclusion that WP:WEB would be wrong if Cut-the-knot didn't satisfy it, is incorrect; the proper conclusion is that WP:WEB does not apply in this case. As a guideline, WP:WEB need not apply in all cases. Furthermore, I agree there is a problem of "webcruft" and I see Halidecyphon's nomination as an commendable effort to get rid of it. The nomination may have been a mistake in this particular instance but that is not so easy to determine for an outsider. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, per all comments above. See in particular Jitse's comment. and the what links here for his page. linas 01:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I strongly support Wikipedia's many external links to cut-the-knot, mentioned above. But does it necessarily follow that we need an article about the site itself? —Blotwell 01:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• no vote I got a whiff of the current activity through the good services of Oleg the gatekeeper. I thank every one for their involvement and vote. I wish to add my two cents and apologize in advance if the result appears worth a nickel. First, with a deep appreciation for Michael's effort, I still do not care for the article. Neither do I plan on editing it in any way. Second, I think, you fellows have to decide whether the category of Educational sites belongs in an encyclopdia or not. It may be of interest to consider the difference between an "encyclopedia" and an "online encyclopedia." If the category is present then I would think that my site is as educational as a next one. Third, the web awards, traditionally made prominently available to the visitors are of no great value. A group of SciAm editors is not a Nobel prize committee, of course, but they can be as misguided as the latter. Thus I would not place a great score on their award. Perhaps, MERLOT is a little different. It's a volunteer organization and I assume there was a chance for a broad participation as is the case in the wikipedia voting. Fourth, while I did not write the cut-the-knot article, I added quite a few links to my site. I do not know whether anybody else did. Thus the number of links from wikipedia to my site may not be a trustworthy criterion for site evaluation. The suitability of the links may. I am rather proud that I had no difficulty supplying a great quantity of good quality links. Fifth, google became an unruly behemoth. They dropped cut-the-knot.org from their indices on January 6, I believe, the reason for which I may only surmise. The idiots left all the entries for cut-the-knot.com, which is a (secondary) domain parked on top of .org. Alexa's index of .com is in the 500,000s, that of the (primary) .org was in the 50,000s. On an online forum hosted by google somebody suggested that their maneuver was due to the fact that there was a 302 (temporary) redirection from one site to the other, not the expected 301, which means "permanent". The trouble is that the redirection is from .com to .org, and not the other way round. You may want to know why I have this arrangement. In the beginning it was a plain .com site. When it began breaking the bandwidth limit and the penalty gew excessive (there was a month when the site's upkeep cost me $400), I made a copy on a different server, dubbed it cut-the-knot.org and would switch to it before incurring unsustainable penalties at cut-the-knot.com. My efforts notwistanding, the site was evicted from its shared server, at which point I simply parked it on top of the existing .org. It was so long ago, that most of the links to the site are via .org, some are still to .com. As you see, google's behavior is just a smack under the belt. Well, I am sorry. It looks like a dime's worth - just do not know to whom. Thank you all again. Alexander Bogomolny

Alexander, I'm sorry, I stupidly didn't go to the page with the list of awards. This site is clearly notable (and fun, may I add!)-Halidecyphon 20:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

• comment What I don't care for in the article is that it's (currently) too short. Michael Hardy 02:32, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep. Definitely qualifies under notability. Surprised that anyone even considered nominating this article. Keep up the good work, Alexander !Gandalf61 09:28, 18 January 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.