Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Viral email

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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 was keep. It could be cleaned up a little, but it's not a terrible article, and seems to meet our policies. . - Philippe 03:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Viral email

Viral email (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Insufficient context. On February 8th, 2007 the article was tagged with {{context}}. I believe this was a valid tagging. From that date nothing has ever been done to the article to improve it. I came across it today, and tagged it with a speedy tag of A1. The speedy tag was later removed. I beleive this article lacks sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Rockfang (talk) 15:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment Viral e-mail is not synonymous to e-mail virus. An E-Mail virus is a harmfull program spread trough e-mail, with the intention to cause mayhem, steal data and similar. Viral Email refers to the marketing strategie to spread word about product or services quickly. If there would be a word closely related to it it would be spam, but i still don't think the meaning of those two words is similar. Excirial (Talk,Contribs) 17:31, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment One of the reasons that "viral" became an acceptable marketing term is that computer viruses don't spread through e-mail the way they used to. "Viral" all by itself means marketing, not malware. --Dhartung | Talk 21:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment - They do still spread through email, judging from my spam folder. There might not be as many attachment-based viruses, but the websites linked in those messages frequently serve only to install malicious software. In this context, I'd still label such messages as viral emails. nneonneo talk 21:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
As I said below, we're talking about a certain behavior of e-mails. This is used by viral advertising, but not only. Some computer virus may spread like this too. Cenarium (talk) 22:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
I edited the article accordingly, don't hesitate to edit and add sources. Cenarium (talk) 02:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep and cleanup. Per Belovedfreak, this is a notable subject. Afd is not cleanup, we don't delete when we have satisfying alternatives. The article needs to be edited, true. A merge would be appropriate as a last resort, but there is enough material for en encyclopedic article. Cenarium (talk) 16:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge Merge with Viral marketing; very similar concepts, and a lot of overlapping information. Gary King (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete This article isn't even about viral emails, it's about viral marketing as a whole. No new information here that's not already in viral marketing. Snellios (talk) 20:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete and redirect to computer virus or trojan horse (computing), which is what I though this would be about from the title. Turns out it's more sales talk about the prospect of endless riches by getting people to use email forwarding to propagate your advertising for you. The article's text doesn't even say that, and neither defines the subject but contains only vague musings on viral advertising. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 20:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Everyone I know would certainly understand the meaning of "viral" here as indicating a marketing topic, not a trojan horse. If I went back in time to 1998, maybe, it would be different. --Dhartung | Talk 21:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect to viral marketing. E-mail is just one of the means of spread. It's a valid and appropriate search term but not sufficiently separate as a topic. --Dhartung | Talk 21:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Disambiguate between the computer-virus-laden email (which I am still getting to this day), and the marketing term. I'm not so sure the title is obvious. nneonneo talk 21:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Keep The "see also" works fine, and the recent article expansion looks excellent. nneonneo talk 18:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment This concept is different from that of computer virus driven by emails, as asserted in the Observer article. If I understand the various sources correctly, this phenomenon is analog to that of viral video, and is used in particular in viral marketing, but not only. It's a type of emails that propagate like a virus, from peer to peer. This behavior is different from spam. Actually, there is no article where the subject can be merged without giving an inaccurate or partial information. There are different types of viral emails, for example: emails spreading due to popularity (for instance, the George W Bush example from the Observer), emails part of a viral marketing campaign... It needs to be clarified on the page, in the intro, we may use {{otheruses4}}. Cenarium (talk) 22:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep Seems to be a significant subject in its own wright. The confusion here indicates it needs a good rewriting and expansion.~~
  • Delete, neologism from the internet marketing world. Nothing to indicate this is a sufficiently separate topic from viral marketing nor sufficiently notable in its own right for its own article. Alternatively, would support either a merge/redirect to viral marketing, or a disambiguation, both as suggested above, but in any case just not keepworthy. KleenupKrew (talk) 10:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
    • I added sources for the article to the talk page from world-famous newspapers indicating that this subject is notable and not a neologism any more. Cenarium (talk) 15:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • merge weak keep - after reviewing the references and such, I still have a hard time seeing how this is really different than viral marketing. Email is just one of the important ways viral marketing spreads. For those that recommend it being merged into computer virus, I strongly disagree as that appears to be a very different subject. As far as things like the existence of viral video, the video is the subject, not the method of viral marketing propagation. Viral marketing is also spread via the water cooler, phones, web forums, etc. I don't articles on those. Wrs1864 (talk) 14:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    • It's different because it's a certain behavior of emails, viral marketing use this behavior for profit. But this phenomenon is not restricted to viral marketing, there are a lot of examples where viral emails are not used for viral marketing, for example the Bush example, and others in the references. The goal of viral marketers is to create a promotional email with a strong probability to become viral. Cenarium (talk) 14:59, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
      • OK, then merge the non-commercial parts into chain letter, which already covers email, web forums, etc.Wrs1864 (talk) 15:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
    • After reviewing the changes that bilby made, I have changed my opinion to a weak keep. I still can see it being merged, but bilby added quite a few good references. Wrs1864 (talk) 18:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep I've done what I can for the article, and I think that there should be enough non-trivial references to establish notability and context, although it still needs a lot of work. In particular there are a number of academic papers devoted to the subject, and while I've tended to focus on those from marketing, the discussion is somewhat broader than that. Merge might still be viable, but I'd suggest it isn't the best choice here - the term is in fairly common usage, and encompasses more than that covered by either chain letters or viral marketing (indeed, most viral emails have nothing to do with marketing at all, and in many cases viral emails are very much anti-marketing). Certainly much of the literature concerns marketing, as Wrs1864 has identified, but it is also covered by some of the "humor" literature as well as the communication studies stuff. Anyway, if it survives AfD I hope that someone more knowledgeable in the area will be able to expand it - if not, there's now (hopefully) better stuff to merge. :) - Bilby (talk) 17:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    • I think you and Cenarium just rescued the article. Great job! nneonneo talk 18:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep notable, reliably sourced. --Pwnage8 (talk) 20:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge content into chain letter (or into viral marketing), but do not redirect (people may be looking for "e-mail virus" instead – you may wish to consider disambiguating). 69.140.152.55 (talk) 03:04, 15 May 2008 (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.