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 Delete

First let us say clearly that this was a terrible nomination. It does not link to relevant policies, and does provide evidence for the claim "non-notable." The more meat you put into the nomination, the better the quality of the debate that ensues. Ok, I'll get off my high horse now.

The claim is that the General notability guideline (and thus the larger Wikipedia:Notability guideline) is not met. Please note these guidelines support but are subordinate to the verification policy.

Since this article does have sources, the debate here is "Do these sources rise to the level intended by the policy?" This is, are these reliable sources?

The sources themselves:

  1. Mendham, Scott. "Alt.net: Cracking Up" PC World (December 1999)
    • It's important to note that nowhere is the requirement that sources be online.
    • So just because an editor couldn't find a particular source to verify doesn't mean it "doesn't count." We believe in the source by default. Somewhat like trust but verify.
    • Online, there is partial archive available, see this search that appears to confirm that this edition does cover December 199, on page #103 at least.
    • Looking at a sub search I get "Your search - phrozen - did not match any documents."
    • However, the whole text is not included, so perhaps it's just not searched. I look some more...
    • The lead three paragraphs are available at [1]. No mention of Phrozen.
    • Now, what to do with this? I'm going to make the logical leap that if the article was primarily about Phrozen they'd have shown up in the lede. If anyone has access to this material and can provide counter evidence, please do so.
  2. The Dark Art of Cracking by Vinod Unny, PCQuest (magazine), March 1999.
    • See comments by FuFoFuEd (talk) 22:17, 28 June 2011. He's totally correct.
  3. a b http://www.defacto2.net/dl/documentsweb/tKC_history.html
    • The quality of the material on that page should in of itself give anyone even remotely familiar with Wikipedia:V#What_counts_as_a_reliable_source serious pause.
    • From What is defacto2 about? "Why cover this area specifically? To be honest, because no one else has." There's nothing further there to give any indication of editorial oversight that raises to the level of "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."
    • Not a reliable source.
  4. a b c http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/phrozen/profile.html
    • It's a fortunecity link. The distance between this and a reliable source is vast enough that it is difficult to convey succintly! From "about us" : FortuneCity offers ad-free web hosting, domain names, free web site and email address services. Our affordable hosting makes FortuneCity the best place to host your small business website or personal web site.
    • Not a reliable source.
  5. InfoWorld‎ Magazine - Mar 24, 1997 - v. 19, no. 12 - 150 pages
    • This meets the absolute minimum bar for inclusion as a reliable source, and leaves a good deal of skin on the bar while doing so.
    • It's three paragraphs on page 122 of the "Notes from the Field" section of Infoworld. The coverage is neither positivly attributable (Cringely is a pen name), nor is it "in depth."
    • Special outrage goes to the adder of this link for not putting "p. 122." I, like anyone who wants to confirm a source, should not have to scan through over a hundred pages of scanned text to find this material.

In the final examination of these, we have on incredibly weak source and one source of unknown quality.

There have been long-standing request more more sources, and from the talk page it appears that effort has gone into locating sources. Despite that, it doesn't have multiple, reliable, sources.

Please do note that I, like most adminstrators, will provide copies of deleted material for the purposes of writing an article if more sources are found (or verified) and that all deletion decisions are subject to Deletion review. I encourage User:67.175.211.114 to continue to contribute to debates in the good faith manner that they have done so here, and hope that they won't get discouraged by this decision.

Aaron Brenneman (talk) 05:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Phrozen Crew[edit]

Phrozen Crew (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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non-notable warez group. Ridernyc (talk) 03:57, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep There appears to be 17 mentions of Phrozen Crew in books. --Hm2k (talk) 09:22, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 13:16, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 13:16, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
not single one of those seem to be significant coverage. Most only give a list of names of various groups. Ridernyc (talk) 18:47, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
InfoWorld Mar 24, 1997 contains significant coverage. Combined with the trivial mentions in other books and press coverage mentioned in the Phrozen Crew Archives should suggest it's significance. Although many of the references no longer exist online, they will exist in archives offline. --Hm2k (talk) 18:18, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

KEEP - Anyone who knows anything about the history of reverse engineering software knows who the Phrozen Crew is, and that they're an enormously important part of history. If you don't know who they are I personally think that you shouldn't be voting to remove it, just as if I didn't know anything about fixing the exhaust manifold on a 1923 Ford Model-T I wouldn't go randomly recommending to delete IT. the only thing I might recommend here is to get someone who has actual past experience of PC to beef this article up some more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.211.114 (talk) 01:57, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

have any significant coverage in reliable sources? Ridernyc (talk) 03:24, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:41, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've updated the article to contain more in-depth coverage which should satisfy this issue now. --Hm2k (talk) 19:51, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Which references besides defacto2.net, a warez catalog, provide in-depth coverage? FuFoFuEd (talk) 21:20, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you care to look: PC Quest, PC World and InfoWorld magazines all offer substantial in-depth coverage of the activities surrounding this group, with summaries that acknowledged this. --Hm2k (talk) 21:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the PC Quest one, and the coverage is very brief and not really specific to this group:
Extended content
"As the world turns towards the Internet for almost everything, so will the software. This will make server authentication the trend for program registration. But knowing how resourceful crackers are, I’m sure they’ll find ways of circumventing these checks too. Already cracking groups like Phrozen Crew, United Cracking Force, the Exterminators, and others are working toward this goal. The first successful Internet program crack I know of was the release of an alpha version of ICQ 99, which was released on many Warez sites. Although I’ve not seen the uncracked version of this alpha, which is supposed to use a different authentication server method, the cracked version works just fine, with all the new features enabled.

Cracking is truly an art, even if it is a dark one. Ask any programmer who has had to understand code written by someone else without any documentation or comments, about what a nightmare it can be. Crackers, on the other hand, thrive on this, and many crackers, like tKC(founder of Phrozen Crew) and Saltine (who first cracked the commercial wrapper RS Agent), have become legends in their own right.

To end this article on cracking, I cannot but use the tagline of one of the most popular cracking groups around, Phrozen Crew. This explains the psychology of the cracker in one simple line, "We always get what we want!""
It's not even clear from that if Saltine was a member of Phrozen Crew or if the Crew cracked the alpha version of ICQ 99. It's basically a garbage article with hardly anything citable in it; I'm not surprised PCQuest isn't in the computer journalism business anymore. -- FuFoFuEd (talk) 22:17, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The original issue was the claim that the group was "Non notable". Again, anyone who is familiar with the scene knows that in order to even be mentioned as one of 2-3 groups in any article, especially magazines as large as PC World and Infoworld (mainstream magazines mind you) demonstrate how those groups have broken out, ahead of the pack, which as anyone IN the scene can tell you, it's a dog eat dog world. Only the best of the best break out, so that is notability. You have to remember that practically NO groups get much attention from the mainstream media, and when so, it's done very briefly and in a toned down manner due to the OBVIOUS nature of the groups. They want to be careful not to PROMOTE such things. Also, we're talking about roughly 1995-2000; the media may be slightly more willing to discuss groups now thant they were at that time period. Times have changed. Regarding the mention of the ICQ99 crack, I may be mistaken, but I do believe that that crack was created by ThE STaRDoGG CHaMPioN, which was a member of Phrozen crew. I highly recommend that this discussion only involve people who are familiar with the scene, as opposed to people who have no idea about it, otherwise there's a strong chance of losing important parts of history, that these people are simply unaware of. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.211.114 (talk) 22:48, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • According to the PCQuest article, they are indeed still in business, so I can only assume that you are mistaken. --Hm2k (talk) 11:24, 29 June 2011 (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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