Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

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 keep. `'mikka (t) 00:40, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

This page is completely original research and self-reference. To meet Wikipedia's policies, this article should not be included unless notable media sources have covered it and those articles can be cited. So assuming that doesn't happen, this article should either be deleted or moved to the Wikipedia namespace. Most of the articles in the "Wikipedias by language" category should also be evaluated to see if they should be deleted or moved to the Wikipedia namespace as well, since most of them have no non-Wikipedia/Wikimedia citations and include a lot of orginal research stuff that only a Wikipedian/Wikimedian would know. ENpeeOHvee 23:56, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

• Delete all. Links to wikipedia in other languages are on the main page, I don't think there's anything to salvage that isn't already covered on the relevant namespaces. Equendil Talk 01:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• I got off of Wikibreak for this Keep This article is relevant for Wikipedia to explain the different contexts of it. I'm going to WP:IAR, to not allow the rules of Wikipedia to cut it's own heel. It's relevant enough. Yanksox 03:37, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

If it's relevant to Wikipedia then it can be discussed in a Wikipedia namespace - that's not a good argument for it being encyclopedic. ENpeeOHvee 04:42, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

It's (brace yourself) #666 on Alexa ranking, which is good. Also, it meets WP:WEB. Yanksox 04:49, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• • • The alexa rank of metawiki is not 600. Alexa considers *.wikimedia.org to be the same site, so for example all traffic to *commons* is included in that number. Also, upload.wikimedia.org is included, so it's an excersise for the reader to determine why wikimedia.org doesn't have a rank as high as wikipedia itself. Metawiki is actually very low traffic. I'd highly doubt that it would cross the 100,000th point on Alexa by itself. The varrious funraisers logos and such which are pulled from wikimedia.org sites by the wikipedias are what causes a lot of this number. A quick google search shows that meta is almost entirely unlinked outside of Wikimedia sites. --Gmaxwell 21:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• Keep With cleanup, why should this be on Wikipedia namespace? It is an extant and notable entity--the article should be edited to fit the constraints of the encyclopedia, rather than scrapping the entire idea. Adambiswanger1 04:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

If the entity is notable then it shouldn't be difficult to find notable (not some random Wikipedian/Wikimedian's blog) non-Wikipedia sources to verify everything that's discussed in the article. But I really don't think that Meta-Wiki is an encyclopedically notable site. It's notable to Wikipedia, but not so much to the general public (which is what the Wikipedia namespace is for). And since as far as we know it hasn't been reported on in any notable source, anything that anyone writes there is gonna be ORIGINAL RESEARCH from their experience with Wikipedia/Wikimedia. On the other hand, if a newspaper was to interview a Wikipedian and report on it, then we could turn around and write about it and cite them. That's at least supposedly the standard for the main Wikipedia article, but for some reason those rules are being ignored for all the peripheral Wikimedia-related articles. And it violates NPOV for Wikipedia to hold its own projects to a different standard than those of others. So for all those reasons, it's pretty clear it should be deleted from Wikipedia (and moved to a Wikipedia namespace project page if need be). ENpeeOHvee 04:42, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• May I ask my fellow editors to remember that we are writing an encylopedia, not merely going around and enforcing guidelines? Yanksox has invoked WP:IAR, and it is with this spirit that all of us should contribute. We are here for the improvement of Wikipedia, not the supremacy of its guidelines. Also, the content of the article is entirely irrelevant, since that can change completely with a few minutes of editing. Big picture, people. Adambiswanger1 06:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Transpose to Meta itself or, alternatively, to Wikipedia namespace; this is not encyclopedic content. Sandstein 05:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unless sourced from reputable, secondary sources. Kotepho 08:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per relatively high Alexa ranking and Template:Wikimedia Foundation: if we have articles about Wikisource and even Wikispecies, we could have one about Meta too. --Zoz (t) 10:41, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep per Adambiswanger1. This nomination is extremely not funny. MaxSem 11:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep the entity is worthy of an article in itself. (if only for alexa result alone) Yes it could be said to be self referential but then so could the article on wikipedia itself. Ydam 11:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment RE: Alexa and IAR: Its supposed Alexa ranking was cited, but that raking was misleading, as Alexa gives the same exact rank to a subdomain as it gives to the main domain. So meta.wikimedia.org [1] gets the same exact rank as wikimedia.org [2]. Also, User:Zoz cited some other Wiki-Media project website articles, but if some of those are just original research and self-reference, then I think they should be deleted too. I think there's a very strong case for keeping the main Wikipedia article, as Wikipedia is a major website which has recieved extensive media coverage and can thus be written citing those sources. The same goes for any other Wikimedia website where notable sources have written about it which can be cited. Someone said that it should be kept on the basis of "Ignore All Rules," but I don't see how violating self-reference, original research, and NPOV - to include an article about a site which hasn't been shown to be encyclopedic - benefits Wikipedia. ENpeeOHvee 18:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm starting to pack my bags for this site, and let me leave you with some words of wisdom till I come back: This article benefits the site because it is part of the site, it's part of a beautiful project that "makes the internet not suck." I will not stand by idley while it's being cut down but it's own rules. It's extremly important because it is the project, and the project, last time I checked: is relevant. I am keeping the overal aestics of the site up by ignoring the rules, since the rules would kill Wikipedia, and creating one massive downfall. Absoutely not. Yanksox 18:11, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• • To the contrary, Wikimedia.org is only a page that points to the Wikimedia projects and meta. Since meta is really the only thing hosted on wm.org that a lot of people visit, the Alexa ranking is valid. --Rory096 19:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:V and WP:NOR are not policies you can ignore, doing so turns Wikipedia into Everything 2. If we want to have something about meta. that does not fit content guidelines we have many places to put it other than article space. Wikipedia is not about Wikipedia, it is about building an encyclopedia that is free for everyone and can spread beyond Wikipedia. Kotepho 20:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

This is relisted per WP:DRV Computerjoe's talk 17:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• Speedy keep per above digital_me^{(TalkˑContribs)} 18:06, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep It's a notable web site. It deserves an article in the main namespace. —Mets501^talk 18:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Per above. -- from The King of Kings 18:26, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Changing my vote: REDIRECT to Wikipedia:Meta. While Wikimedia Meta-Wiki does meet the requirements per WP:WEB, it's a Wikimedia Project which already has an article in the Wikipedia namespace. Plus, the link Meta-Wiki redirects to Wikipedia:Meta, so why not just redirect. -- from The King of Kings 18:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, 666 Alexa is really good, and do not redirect to Wikipedia:Meta. Cross-namespace redirects are bad. --Rory096 19:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

That's not its Alexa rank - that's the rank for wikimedia.org - Alexa doesn't rank subdomains separately. (see my comment above) ENpeeOHvee 19:33, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

See my comment above, the rank is valid. --Rory096 20:04, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

It may well be that most of the links on Wikimedia.org go to that subdomain, I don't know, but I did find that wikimedia.org didn't even consider Meta notable enough to link to from their main page. At any rate though, a fairly high Alexa ranking is not by itself enough of a reason to keep it as its own article. Nobody here has yet shown how the site meets any of the three criteria of WP:WEB. If we just went by Alexa rank, we'd have an article for Pichunter.com - ranked 636 [3] - and I'm sure a lot of other sites that have an inflated rank due to Google bombing - intentional or otherwise. ENpeeOHvee 20:15, 10 June 2006 (UTC) Correction - Gmaxwell pointed out above that there are indeed other high-traffic projects on that same domain name - including the Wikimedia Commons. ENpeeOHvee 22:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

wm.org probably doesn't link to meta because it's solely for project coordination, not education, and so most people won't need it, and the ones who might want to go there know how. As for the Alexa ranking, sure it is, it means it's a high-traffic site, and as long as it's verifiable, there's no reason not to have the article. Googlebombing does not increase a site's Alexa ranking, as Alexa rankings are based on the amount of visitors to that site (which they measure using their toolbar). And, to be honest, I'm surprised we don't have an article for Pichunter. --Rory096 20:21, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

You still haven't shown how Meta-Wiki meets any of the criteria of WP:WEB. Has the site "been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself"??? (If so, then show me where) Has "the website or content won a well known and independent award, either from a publication or organisation"?... (if yes, which ones?) And is Meta-Wiki "distributed via a site which is both well known and independent of the creators" (Wikipedia is well known, but certainly not Independent of Wikimedia). And finally, WP:WEB notes that "Even if an entire website meets the notability criteria, its components (forums, articles, sections) are not necessarily notable and deserving of their own separate article." This is especially applicable here, because while Wikimedia and Wikipedia are certainly notable, that doesn't mean that everything associated with it automatically is. ENpeeOHvee 20:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

That's why WP:WEB is a guideline. Sites may be notable without meeting WP:WEB. With an Alexa ranking of 666, I'd say meta qualifies. --Rory096 20:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The rank sums up WM perfectly though :D Will (^E_@) T 19:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Keep It is a very notable website and meets WP:WEB comprehensively. It is in bad taste to leave this article in AfD. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 19:26, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

So meta's content has "been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself"? I'm not seeing that, and that's what meeting WP:WEB means. --W.marsh 19:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• I agree that a cross-namespace redirect wouldn't be a good idea here, so Merge to WikiMedia Foundation. This is an unsourced stub (possibly a perma-stub), quasi-noteworthy aside from its relationship to this very site (which is a systemic bias we should avoid, not foster), and doesn't really meet the WP:WEB requirements. Would be more useful to readers as a subsection of a broader article than as an isolated stub, I'd think. -Silence 19:29, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Naconkantari 19:33, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to WikiMedia Foundation. This is obviously of great interest to Wikipedians, but I've yet to see evidence that this actually meets WP:WEB... there doesn't seem to be much or any external interest in Meta. A few passing mentions here and there, but nothing really meaningful. Could only dig up one mention at all in the past few months [4], and it was just a passing mention. --W.marsh 19:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep per above Will (^E_@) T 19:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, but good God make it a better article. Granted, it's hard to make an article about Meta when Meta is so incredibly disorganized in the first place... Linuxbeak (AAAA!) 20:02, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Merge. Comment: Notability isn't inherited as User:Messedrocker said in WP:DRV. But that's assuming Meta is under Wikipedia in the hierarchy. However as the name suggests, Meta is contains meta-content so it's rather the parent of Wikipedia than it's child. Parents or meta-things of notable topics inherit the notability imo. (If a subdomain is notable then the whole domain is; if the theory of relativity is notable then it's inventor is etc.) --Zoz (t) 20:45, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• The analogy fails. If Wikipedia is the building, Meta-Wiki is at best the scaffolding, not the architect. Theory of relativity is to Albert Einstein as Wikipedia is to Jimbo Wales, not to Meta-Wiki. "Meta-things" do not automatically inherit the notability of the things themselves; there is no stipulation on Wikipedia's notability or verifiability guidelines saying such, and common sense suggests that "notability isn't inherited" is indeed a correct and necessary thing to keep in mind in this situation, just as much as it is for any other ("a certain lavatory of the White House" does not inherit the notability of "the White House"). To meet the requirements of WP:WEB, WP:V and WP:NOR, citations are needed (and, obviously, ones outside of the site itself!) to confirm its notability. Why should we hold our sister-sites (more like estranged-crazy-aunt-sites?) to a lower standard than we hold other websites? If anything, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard, to circumvent self-referential bias. -Silence 20:55, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• I used analogy only to prove that "meta-things" of notable topics inherit notability. I didn't mean to relate Jimbo to Albert or anything :D. The point is that Meta stands higher in the hierarchy than WP, even if WP is far more notable in itself than Meta. --Zoz (t) 21:05, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• But it doesn't stand higher in the hierarchy, in any meaningful way (i.e., in any way that relates to notability at all). And I specifically demonstrated why your analogy fails to show why notable topics don't inherit notability, not to relate Jimbo to Albert either. The notability of an article must be established in its own right: simply saying "Meta-Wiki must be noteworthy because Wikipedia is noteworthy" is weak reasoning. If it's as notworthy as you imply, it should be fantastically easy to find reputable sources galore to add to the article, and then the issue will be settled. As of yet, that hasn't happened, so notability hasn't yet been established to a sufficient degree to merit an article; try harder. -Silence 21:11, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

• "Meta Wikipedia" (note the quotation marks: written exactly like that) gets 154,000 ghits[5]. --Zoz (t) 21:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Only 98 unique hits [6]. ENpeeOHvee 21:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Another 377k (non-unique) Computerjoe's talk 22:05, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

268 unique hits, and many of them are about other non-related sites with similar names - like metawiki.com and a Wiki search engine. ENpeeOHvee 22:13, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, you're right. Changing my vote to Merge. --Zoz (t) 15:18, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

A note about Google search, Google returns a maximum of 1000 results whatever you search for. A query for "Meta Wikipedia" [7] returns 97 'unique' hits of 149,000, but what it really does is return 97 unique hits out of the 1000 first occurences it finds. Equendil Talk 20:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

• Merge as per W. marsh. Not an innately notable wiki. Johnleemk | Talk 21:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Just a duplicate of Wikipedia:Meta, and anything public facing about meta should be in the foundation article. Including this highly non notable internal site would be a violation of no-self-reference. --Gmaxwell 21:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as above. Alexa rank misleading due to the fact it is subdomain of Wikimedia.org, which includes the higher-traffic Wikimedia Commons -- and Alexa, apparently, counts all of Wikimedia.org under one rank. I don't see how Meta itself is notable, it's just a component of Wikimedia when you think about it. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 23:18, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Content and change to Soft Redirect - it doesn't serve any real purpose ... how many separate webpages within a single website have an article? BigDT 23:26, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• strong keep: Notability far greater than that judged acceptable for many other articles. Ombudsman 23:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect per W.marsh. --bainer (talk) 06:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I think as Wikia gets larger wikimedia will become much more important. Further Meta wiki has articles on wikipedia philosophy and their are frequent questions on that topic from outside. Nicholas Carr for example has written on these sorts of issues about a dozen times. After Amazon reviews this is one of the easiest web 2.0 cites to critique and far and away the one with a well developed discussion of its own nature. jbolden1517^Talk 17:40, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Looks far too much like WP:POINT. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 10:56, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Quite sad. The keep proponents here originally said that it met the requirements of WP:WEB. Myself and others showed that it clearly does not. Many then claimed that it should be kept in spite of this due to an allegedly high Alexa rank. But we showed that this rank was inaccurate because it shares its domain name with the much higher traffic Wikimedia Commons. So now that there's apparently no good argument left for defending inclusion on its own merit, they've some of them have turned to character assassination and completely baseless allegations of bad faith. ENpeeOHvee 17:38, 12 June 2006 (UTC) Note correction - I was a bit haphazard when I originally wrote the comment above, so just to clarify, my criticism was never intended for those who simply have an honest difference of opinion, but for those who have made ad hominem attacks - specifically User:GeorgeStepanek above and User:Computerjoe when he prematurely closed the debate on the basis of similar allegations, which were overturned - see the Deletion Review. ENpeeOHvee 20:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

That sounds trollish. Computerjoe's talk 18:18, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but his point is valid. Accusing the dozen editors who have voted against keeping this article (i.e. the 12 merge- and delete-voters) of WP:POINT is, in addition to being potentially offensive (hence ENpeeOHvee's overly aggressive response), an ad hominem, and, as such, does not address the topic of this discussion: whether Wikimedia Meta-Wiki currently meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion of articles. We're discussing an article, not a person. -Silence 18:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. I don't think anyone who has become involved this discussion is seriously contemplating the complete removal of the information from this site. The question is rather: what would the best place for this material? In it's own article? Merged into another article? In the Wikipedia namespace? Maybe a merge and redirect is the best option, but merge and redirect do not require an AFD. At the very most one would start a discussion on the relevant talk page—and possibly not even that. Suggesting that the article should be merged or moved is not WP:POINT, but creating the AFD in the first place looks very much like it. Why go through this whole process—and face all this argument, dissent and controversy—if you don't have to? It only makes sense if the real motive is to generate controversy and dissent. I stand by my comment, and my vote. This AFD should be disposed of, and the discussion taken to the article's talk page, where it belongs. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 08:02, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. Meta is a notable entity, and the nom's comments look like WP:POINT to me. jgp 10:52, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I'd say individual Wikimedia projects are "automatically" notable, "duh," (quotes added for self-sarcasm), though individual subprojects (e.g., specific language versions of Wikipedia) may need to be evaluated according to their accomplishments and popularity, and may need to be merged to appropriate subarticle. Can't really hurt to have a separate article for Meta, that's all I'm saying. Perhaps merge later if that's necessary. Either way, should be kept in some form. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 14:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep It's part of the Wikimedia foundation. Deleting this article is pretty proposterous... Beno1000 16:06, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, obviously. Madd4Max 20:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Rather odd nomination to start with. StuffOfInterest 15:26, 15 June 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.