Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marvel Database Project (second nomination)

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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. — Feb. 23, '06 [00:51] <freakofnurxture|talk>

[edit] Marvel Database Project

The article notes itself that "just over 27% of the Database Project's traffic comes from Wikipedia". This is hardly surprising given most of JamieHari (talk · contribs) contributions are inserting links to it across the wikipedia, and he is the site owner and editor in chief, as well as main contributor to this article. The article Marvel Database Project has been the subject of a deletion debate where consensus was delete and has been speedied twice since. The page is vanity, spam and fails WP:WEB. I would speedy again but the page has grown and so can't be thought of as a simple recreation, given User:Xaosflux's comments on the talk page. Delete. Hiding talk 10:53, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Weak keep somewhat notable in its field. Bobby1011 15:39, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Curious; how so? I'd certainly never heard of it before. Where has it been covered in the comics press then? Hiding talk 16:13, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
  • That's trivial coverage, to be fair. It's not coverage of the site as a resource, which is something one could reference in an article on the site, it's just a link to the site. Hiding talk 20:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Agreed that the article isn't about the MDP project, but IGN is very much a trusted news source in the comics industry and would likely not link to the Marvel Database Project if they felt the resources were inaccurate, out-of-date or the site itself could pose some controversy as a cruft-site.
  • Sadly, per WP:WEB those mentions are trivial. When Marvel Database Project is covered in feature articles, feel free to come back. I'll even help you write the article. Until then, I'm sorry, but it fails notability. As to the two ign articles in question, they're written by someone using a pseudonym, I can find no bio details of the author, it's entirely possible the author is a user of the site, and ign would fall into the dubious portion of our reliable sources guidelines. I don't want to rain on your parade, like I say, get the coverage to be included here and I'll welcome you back. At the moment, it feels to me like the site is using Wikipedia to get a leg up, something I hope you will agree is bad form, and also against policy. Hiding talk 14:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete and page protect it this time. I'll probably check it out and it is a cool idea, but that doesn't make it notable.--Isotope23 17:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. I don't yet see any evidence of it being important enough for an article. If in the future there is verifiable evidence of it being important then it can have an article, but only after that evidence is presented. As it is the article is full of original research. - Taxman Talk 20:14, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete cruft.Blnguyen 02:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom; vanispamcruftisement ergot 02:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I am very very sympathetic to reference sites, (the notion that they should be subject to WP:WEB as with any other site is one I do not agree with) and don't consider low Alexa rank (this one seems to have about 172,000?) as an argument to support a vote against a reference. But what I am not seeing in my searches is evidence that this site is regarded as a reference by others. If a link from official Marvel sites (more than just a fan link) were evidenced, it would help. If the articles had sourcing (for example Captain America, an article you'd expect to have depth (it does) and sourcing (it does not... all the facts in the bio have no ties to particular issues or sourcing of any kind), it would be more likely to be a scholarly reference. I think there is a great deal of work put into the site by the users (considerably more than Yellowikis, which I voted Keep for) and the article here shows a good deal of work, but it's by one person. And the community has come to consensus that it should not be kept, more than once. So, with some considerable regret userify. If it was a reference site that's referencable, I would have advocated keep. I am glad this was not speedied so it could be discussed. ++Lar: t/c 04:08, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Lar, thank you very much for looking more deeply into our site to see our value. We have worked really hard, but not all of our pages are completely polished yet. The information is still there, but some typos exist and some pictures and sources are missing. I, too, have watched our Alexa rating, but it seems to make no sense... We were at about 80,000 4 months ago, but our rank keeps falling. I have traffic analysis software that says our traffic has since doubled. I think Alexa is a VERY poor indicator of success. We are more well known than Hiding would believe, I have 'chatted' online with several folks I just met, who knew about our site before I even told them... (It was a nice feeling...) --JamieHari 15:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete without prejudice to an acceptable recreation. I sympathise—I can see that a lot of work has gone into writing the piece. However, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and like all encyclopedias has certain editorial standards. I agree with Taxman that in this instance they have not been met; specifically, there is a lack of external verification to indicate the subject's notability. Wikipedia's policies on sourcing and verifiability have deliberately been set extremely low—far lower than for any other serious encyclopedia, to my knowledge. But they are standards, nevertheless. When MDP is sufficiently noteworthy that people independently write about it in reviews or critiques in reputable publications, I think most WPns would be glad to have a referenced article. I also note the point that there are articles on WP which, like MDP, do not meet articlespace policies. This however would seem to be a reason to improve them or delete them, not to allow other articles of a similar nature to join them. Regards ENCEPHALON 04:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
    • ENCEPHALON, You certainly make good reasoning for the policies that exist. I certainly agree that the level of standards should remain as high as possible without excluding too much content. My contention is that the MDP IS more notable than has so far been shown. Here I have added a few examples of notable and independant sites that have indeed written articles citing our project as a reference. IGN, a long-standing and trusted resource surely should count as one vote for our notariaty. Similar articles have surfaced in other major internet publications as well. I will continue to hunt for them and add them to the list. Hopefully, this will shed more light on the subject of our notariaty. --JamieHari 05:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Thanks for that, Jamie. The IGN link is promising, isn't it? However, it seems to me that it does not talk about MDP, which is what one would hope for from an external reference that is meant to "do a lot of work", so to speak. I'm rather afraid it doesn't materially change my assessment, Jamie. But don't worry, WP will probably be around for a long while, and the moment you have the required refs... :-) ENCEPHALON 19:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Incidentally, JamieHari, you are quite right about Alexa. There are (too) many folks who seem to regard Alexa rankings and google hits as some sort of indicator of "encyclopedicness". This is incorrect and unhelpful, for reasons others have written on more elegantly than I. The test of encyclopediability, if one may call it that, is compliance with the article space policies WP:V (and related guidelines), WP:NOR, WP:NOT and WP:NPOV. A page that meets them should not be deleted even if it had no google hits. A page that doesn't shouldn't be kept even if it had a million hits. ENCEPHALON 04:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Agreed, even pointless, empty websites can get a million hits if the populace gets wind of it as a new fad. I merely intended it to bolster my arguement that I am not the only member of my website. he he he... --JamieHari 05:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: The deletion of the MDP page on Wikipedia.

Keep.

I thank you all for not speedy deleting and for the chance to discuss this further. I would certainly like to apologize for adding the page myself. I didn't, at the time, realise it would go against the applicable policy. This time when I added it, I waited until our site was of more substantial value to the community at large. Our site has now had over 55,000 edits and nearly 2.5 million page views. It is not even a year old yet and has already made it to Wikipedia's list of largest wikis at 72nd place.

I had seen the Memory Alpha page, a similar wiki-site about Star Trek. When I first added the Marvel Database Project, I was probably wrong to do so. Not that it wasn't a valid page, but that I was too eager and the project was not YET worth a Wikipedia article. I believe the situation has changed with our recent efforts. The Memory Alpha page was my inspiration to make our page, I figured wiki projects held a special place in the heart of Wikipedians. Their site, too, was added by their (co)founder. User:MinutiaeMan / MinutiaeMan userpage on Memory Alpha.

I assure you our Marvel project is not cruft. We are growing at a very good rate. We have new editors all the time and we have worked very hard to build a respectable database.

I emplore you to reconsider your delete votes and consider other projects of similar nature that have their own articles. The damage was done when I created the article myself, but I believe the value of our project still is there...

Thank you,

--JamieHari 07:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Comment - Has this project been featured by a major source? Nifboy 05:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Comment I had nominated this for CSD, and it was deleted back in 2005-11-24. at the time the article consisted of nothing but a logo. In interest of this debate only I have speedily restored all prior versions back in to the page history. This does NOT mean that I endorse these versions, and have placed a talk page notice that they are not to be reverted to. In this article's current form I vote Don't Speedily Delete, but don't really have a specific keep or delete opinion. xaosflux Talk/CVU 01:07, 22 February 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.