User talk:Frank at blb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hello Frank at blb! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking Image:Wikisigbutton.png or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 23:48, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Getting Started
Getting Help
Policies and Guidelines
The Community
Things to do
Miscellaneous

Contents

[edit] Blue letter bible advice, prod, notablity and style

Hi, thanks for asking my advice. As I see it, the article has three problems-- notability, style and conflict of interest.

Alas, I fear the subject does not meet WP:WEB. A quick check for notability is the "Google Test," where you look for unique Google hits. I get 9 UNIQUE Google hits out of 398,000. (The others are just repeats. Mostly from blueletterbible.org) None of the ones I saw hinted at notability. I also searched for news articles through Google and Factiva and found no independent reviews.

The style for an encyclopedia article requires it to make concice, declarative statements in concise paragraphs. (No rhetorical questions.) Simply state what or who the subject is and what they have, did, or do that makes them encyclopedic. Don't say, "Subject is notable because it is/had/did/does x,y, and z. Just say the subject is/has/did/does x, y, and z." If there is sufficient material, state it all in a nutshell in the opening paragraph and then fill in more detail in subsequent paragraphs.

As you are connected with the subject, this raises the question of conflict of interest. Because a lot of people create articles as promotional vehicles, conflict of interest articles are viewed askance by the community. This is not insurmountable, but you need to be very careful to maintain a neutral point of view in any article in which you are personally connected to the subject.

In short, I fear the subject is not sufficiently notable for an encyclopedia article. You may want to follow the advice below anyway. If on the other hand, you feel the article is beyond salvage, do nothing and an admin will be along to delete it.

Rewrite the thing to conform to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Reread WP:WEB to see if it can be found to meet notability. Incorporate any facts that support that claim in the text. Just work them in, don't say, "Is notable because . . . ." Those three words actually work against your cause. We read them all the time.

If the subject does meet notability, state your case on the talk page and remove the prod sticker. Maybe caption your notes on the talk page, "De prodded". That will help people better understand what is happening. If you do de-prod, it will probably go to WP:AFD for a discussion of the article's merits and demerits. Don't take anything there personally. AfD discussions are sometimes upsetting to newcomers.

AfD is a 5 day debate with three possible outcomes-- unless the outcome is "delete," the article stays.

Hope this helps. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 15:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thread on google hits brought over from my talk page for continuity

Hi, Thanks very much for your advice on Blue Letter Bible.

I will follow it. I will try to be neutral, and I'll start small to see if I can get it to survive! I didn't talk about the non-commercial CD. We've distributed over 70,000 at no cost to students in many countries. Maybe that could be a focus point.

I had a question: I didn't understand the part about what you said here:

A quick check for notability is the "Google Test," where you look for unique Google hits. I get 9 UNIQUE Google hits out of 398,000. (The others are just repeats. Mostly from blueletterbible.org)

Can you show me how to find what you mean by only 9? For instance, when I ask Altavista to find me links to our website, I get either 118,000 or 42,200 or 6210. I'm sorry, I have no idea where the variation comes from, or which number is correct! Same thing with Google: 293,000 or 5,570. Strange!

For us, that seems like a lot. In 1996 we started giving away free search tools for people to incorporate onto their church websites, so that's where they started, anyway.

I think the 'higher' numbers above are bogus: A search for link:xyz.com does what we think it does. But a search for link: xyz.com (with the space added) does a search for pages containing 'xyz.com' and the word 'link'. PS I hope this is a proper way to edit your page. If not, my apologies, and please advise. Thank you. --Frank Rabinovitch 03:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you please help me understand what you mean about most of the 398,000 being from blueletterbible.org. Below, I've tried to make a Google search that excludes links from within the site, and I get 38,900. I don't know why all these numbers are at such variance! Mostly, these would be Bible links. If you have a website that talks about a Bible verse, you can link the verse to our website, or study tools, in a variety of ways.

I found a few reviews, such as 1, 2, 3. I'll try to find more. There are hundreds of pages linking to our website (along with 100s of others, with just a brief blurb, not a review, such as 4. Should they be included?

Many thanks for your advice! PS this editing software is really cool!

--Frank Rabinovitch 18:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


A very good question, and one that comes up often. I only use google for a start because it sopts showing repeats of the same hits or repeats to multiple pages or references to the same site. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 13:54, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of external links

(ported over from Tom's discussion page):

Hi Tom, I noticed your reference regarding the number of external links from wikipedia, here. I notice that you concatenated your listing at 50, with about 5,556 listings having 50 or more links. Could you please provide, if possible, the unconcatenated total, even an aproximation? I am one of the developers of the Blue Letter Bible, an internet-based Bible, which I notice is on your list with 183 links. I'm wondering how that ranks on the total list. I'm trying to provide justification on the talk page of the Blue Letter Bible provisional article, as it may be deleted for lack of notability. I have been getting very helpful and candid advice from one of the Wikipedia editors, please see my talk page. I cited your informal data on the talk page of the BLB article. If this is not appropriate, I will delete it. Many thanks! Frank --Frank Rabinovitch 06:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


Hi; To generate the list, I downloaded wikipedia's database dump,[1] and picked through it manually and with a few one-off scripts. I did not keep any intermediate products, so what is up is all I have. You could download it yourself (it is about 200 megabytes) and someone familiar with sql could probably extract what you need. Otherwise, there is Special:Linksearch, which you may have already used. Tom Harrison Talk 14:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blue letter bible looks nice

Nice job on the rewrite. Looks good. I'd like to encourag you to edit other articles as well. Not sure if it meets notability, though. We'll see if anyone takes it to WP:AfD. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 02:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding links in other pages to your article might be construed as spamming. If the article already mentions BLB by name, it would be OK. But you must be careful to not give the apperarance of spamming.[[User talk:Mikereichold| Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 12:37, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I actually don't find but one article that seems to mention your blue letter bible by name. It was added by an anonymous user and already links to a web page that was used as a source. Adding links pointing to your article or website to other articles would probably be construed as spam. Hope that helps. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 12:37, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
copied from other talk page:
Thanks for your response. Here are a few I was thinking of linking to the BLB article. (By the way, one reason I was motivated was that I saw warning tags on articles that they didn't have enough links to them, and that they needed to add links from other articles, so I was trying to be proactive. I wasn't going to add external links)
--Frank Rabinovitch 18:00, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
They are just internal links. I don't think the article reads POV. You should ask others though. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 20:14, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD nomination of Blue Letter Bible

I have nominated Blue Letter Bible, an article you created, for deletion. I do not feel that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blue Letter Bible. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. TRAVELLINGCARIMy storyTell me yours 04:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)