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. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-26 13:48Z

Adventure Gamers[edit]

Non-notable fansite -- does not meet WP:WEB (which is not a proposal but an official guideline). Andre (talk) 03:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and Salt The Earth, nn fansite; there have been plenty of those showing up lately. --Mhking 03:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. MER-C 04:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Appears to pass criteria #3, if the following is correct:

The site's reviews have been quoted on many adventure game box covers

Very few websites can make this claim. Throw on an ((unreferenced)) tag and give the editors some time to get some shots of the game boxes. --- RockMFR 06:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure Criteria #3 is truly satisfied in this sense, "distributed via a medium" is specifically described as being via an online magazine or newspaper. I don't think that reviews on game boxes cut the mustard. Reading the footnote, it notes that sites satisfying Criteria 3 will invariably satisfy Criteria 1, however this does not seem to be the case. Zun aid ©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 12:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a problem with WP:WEB. If you take it at face value, we could reasonably delete an article about a web subject which has content published in Time or Newsweek or something like that. WP:WEB is shitty in regard to offline publications. --- RockMFR 18:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Print and other offline media are hardly likely to republish web content. The Time and Newsweek examples are a misnomer; more likely they would publish an article about the website, thus satisfying Criterion 1. Even so, republishing in an offline magazine would meet the spirit (if not the letter) of WP:WEB so would be accepted by any reasonable editor. Mentions on game boxes does not meet the spirit of #3. Zun aid ©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The metacritic and gamerankings distribution of their reviews surely makes them meet "3. The content is distributed via a medium which is both well known and independent of the creators, either through an online newspaper or magazine, an online publisher, or an online broadcaster." from WP:WEB --Amaccormack 06:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Metacritic and Game Rankings accept reviews from any website or magazine that is professional, regardless of notability. However, it does seem to be a well organized site with well written reviews, so Keep. TJ Spyke 06:37, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - What does professional mean in this case? Anyway, that they're used by third parties shows that they're notable, regardless if "notability" were a criteria for Metacritic and Game Rankings to include their rankings. Delta Tango • Talk 07:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - "Professional" as in not looking like user-submitted reviews. Also, yes it would have to be used by a notable website. I could start a crappy site and mention other crappy sites reviews, would that mean those sites deserve articles because they were mentioned? Besides, listing the score from this site is not distributing its content. TJ Spyke 07:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      - I of course agree with you about the third-party site having to be notable in itself, as per WP:WEB, I was just not as specific as I could be in my comment. Thanks for your informative comments and your prompt reply. Delta Tango • Talk 07:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually, that is not entirely correct. Game Rankings say "Only Sites in Bold are used to calculate the Average Score used in the Rankings." and Emboldened sites are ones that have been assessed as notable by CNet. AdventureGamers are a site that appears in bold (see the referenced link for gamerankings). Game rankings criteria for emboldening can be seen at http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/help.asp --Amaccormack 09:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
~~Keep per above. Delta Tango • Talk 07:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)~~ Neutral for now. Delta Tango • Talk 08:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete. The article fails to cite "multiple third-party reliable sources" for its info, the only reference provided being the website itself. If the website itself is demonstrated to be the subject of multiple non-trivial citations, ~~or indeed can demonstrate that its reviews are in fact listed in game box covers,~~ then ignore my !vote. Zun aid ©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 08:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Zunaid, mobygames have this box picture with an adventuregamers quote and another one another and another yet another one more for luck --Amaccormack 11:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Not entirely sure if I did it correctly, but I added the box-art links to the page as notes - AGA 11:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've carefully re-read WP:WEB again (and I apologise for simply accepting RockMFR's statement at face value the first time), and as I've mentioned above, I don't think that Criterion #3 is satisfied by "reviews on game-boxes", except perhaps on a technicality. #3 specifically mentions online newspapers and magazines when describing what it means by "distributed via a medium", thus I still feel the article fails WP:WEB per the #1 criterion. Zun aid ©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 12:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Some more notability. Ragnar Tornquist says about AG (amongst others) "the reviews from established adventure gaming sites like Adventure Gamers, Just Adventure, and Quandary - to mention a couple - were very important to me"[1] (my bold). --Amaccormack 11:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- The article on Ragnar Tornquist seems to be AfD material itself for not asserting notability (unless being a game designer is inherently notable?), and the source you cite is his personal blog. I would hesitate to count it towards asserting the notability of this website. Zun aid ©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 12:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Blogs are allowed as references if they are made by an established expert. Since Ragnar has made a number of very popular (The Longest Journey had sold 450,000 copies at full price in July 2002[2], couldn't find info on sales since then) adventure games, he is perhaps an expert on adventure game sites. If Peter Jackson said that a particular Film Review website was important in his blog, would that count? --Amaccormack 13:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: More notability: --Amaccormack 13:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1. Article on adventuregamers in PC Master, a Greek gaming magazine. (August 2002)
2. Featured in the TV program GameQuest on the Dutch channel Veronica. (December 2000)
3. Featured in "Webtips: De 1019 Beste Websites Verzameld" (2000, Issue #1) among large commercial sites such as GameCenter and PC Gameworld.
4. Screenshot of Adventure Gamer featured in "English Quest 2", an Australian secondary school textbook. The site is used as an example to encourage students to think about the construction of effective web pages. (September 2000, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd., tentative print run 20000 copies)
5. Listed in the bibliography of "Ecrire Pour Le Jeu: Techniques Scenaristiques Du Jeu Informatique Et Vidéo" by Emmanuel Gardiola, (June 2000, Editions DIXIT)

Comment: More notability: -- Technitai 14:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cited in academic article, "Virtual Recentering: Computer Games and Possible Worlds Theory" by Jan Van Looy http://www.imageandnarrative.be/tulseluper/vanlooy.htm
Article reprinted on the website of Ernest Adams, a recognized game design consultant, teacher and author http://www.designersnotebook.com/Scrapbook/AdventureGamers/adventuregamers.htm

- I've checked out the two links provided and am making a best guess at the content of the non-links. The first link (citation in the academic article) is for the definition of an adventure game and does not exactly contribute to the meat of the article as it were, i.e. the coverage of AdventureGamers in the context of the article is trivial. People cite Wikipedia all the time for definitions and such-like; it doesn't make Wikipedia content any more reliable or notable. The second link is an interview with Ernest Adams conducted by Adventure Gamers. Of course it's going to be published on AdventureGamers and of course Ernest Adams would see fit to republish an interview with himself on his own website. This doesn't lend any more notability to AdventureGamers per se. The magazines and TV programs cited don't seem notable in and of themselves. In summary, what we have is some notable coverage in non-notable media, as well as non-notable coverage in notable media, none of which satisfy WP:WEB. Does the collective power of so many references establish notability? IMHO, no. Zun aid ©^{Please rate me at Editor Review!} 07:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Where does it say in WP:WEB that the "multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself" ought to be notable in themselves? Wouldn't such an additional constraint lead to a circulus vitiosus when trying to establish anything's notability? I believe that if you agree the coverage itself is notable, it should suffice. 87.206.136.183 10:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep. Notability now appears firmly established. -Toptomcat 18:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep While the site may have started as a fan page, in the years since its inception it has become the defacto news and editorial source for a sizable pocket of the game community, not just for fans of adventure games and storytelling in games, but for developers of those games, and even other members of the press who cover such games. This has been covered pretty well by the increasing pile of links about the site being posted above. The site's notability and credibility have been well established by others in this thread. Ja2ke 19:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also it's worth noting that this AfD proposal seems to at least partially be a result of an only tangentially-related spat between a member of Adventure Gamers' staff and a Wikipedia mod over whether or not certain Wikipedia articles covering small independently developed freeware adventure games should or shouldn't be deleted. Ja2ke 19:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Would you be a little more specific? I was not aware of such a spat. Andre (talk) 21:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Amaccormack, especially his comment on the WP:WEB talk page: who reviews review sites? The current rules effectively ban a review site from ever being mentioned in Wikipedia. This is clearly counterproductive. Furthermore, WP:WEB is explicitly descriptive, not perscriptive, and I'm amazed that it's used as a demand. --Kizor 12:56, 24 December 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.