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)[reply]

Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

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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)[reply]

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

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

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)[reply]
See my comment above, the rank is valid. --Rory096 20:04, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
The rank sums up WM perfectly though :D Will (E@) T 19:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
Only 98 unique hits [6]. ENpeeOHvee 21:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another 377k (non-unique) Computerjoe's talk 22:05, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
Okay, you're right. Changing my vote to Merge. --Zoz (t) 15:18, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
That sounds trollish. Computerjoe's talk 18:18, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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.
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