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 on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result of the debate was DELETE. -Doc(?) 00:39, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. As is my custom with net-related items, I test with Google Groups rather than Google Web, because a) anything important on the Internet is likely to be discussed in USENET, and b) Google Groups is much less subject to distortion by deliberate self-promotion and "search-engine optimization." In this case, a search on "commandN vidcast" (two separate words, not exact phrase) yields no hits at all. Nobody on Usenet has mentioned "commandN" and "vidcast" in the same article. It is impossible to believe this would be true of a notable Internet phenomenon. Compare 19 hits for "al franken podcast" and 160,000 hits for "Wikipedia." Dpbsmith(talk) 01:33, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. OK, you obviously don't have a clue what commandN is. They are one of the biggest and most popular technology vidcasts on the web. They have approximately 50,000 downloads of their video per week. The hosts have featured on many other popular technology shows such as Call For Help and have also featured on the extremely popular podcast This Week in Tech. Google, Google Groups and Usenet have nothing to do with determining if a wikipedia article should be deleted. btw, I posted almost this entire article and I have no affiliation with commandN at all (considering I'm actually from Australia). Yes the article currently does sound a little promotitive, but over time others will/can edit it and it will become less so. btw, do you know what a backlink is? As if you have a look here and here, you will see that many other sites have linked to the commandN site as they are very popular. cheers, Treelovinhippie 02:47, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Of course I don't have a clue as to what commandN is, so I'm trying to do due diligence by checking it out for myself. Wikipedia is based on the whole idea that you do not need credentials in a specific field in order to apply basic scholarship. You're saying that it is fantastically popular... but not one single person on USENET has ever seen fit to mention it? Something does not jibe here. You need to give me something I can accept as neutral and check out for myself. The sort of links you mention are unimpressive, because sites link to each other all the time in attempts to mutually raise their Google pageranks, and because there are sites that are just trying track every podcast or whatnot. OK, I'm going to propose three tests. I don't know the outcome of any of them yet. You tell me which you think I should try.
Do a search to see whether Wired has ever mentioned it
Do an online search of The New York Times, available to me courtesy of my public library, to see whether The New York Times has ever mentioned it
Join the vidcast.org forums and post a query asking people whether commandN is notable.
Which of these would you like me to try? Dpbsmith(talk) 12:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I would agree that a weekly audience of 50,000 would be notable for a downloadable videocast, but I would like to see some sort of independent verification of that. Where did the number come from? Also, the Google (web) search yielded fewer than 400 hits, which is rather small, and Alexa rank is 619,000. I'd be leaning toward delete unless the audience is confirmed. MCB 04:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
OK, count my vote as delete, based on lack of verification of audience (sole source is subject of article relayed via a comment here). MCB 22:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. They don't specifically release how many downloads they receive, since they often use bittorrent to distribute their content and other sources like www.odeo.com and many others. But Amber Mac stated on the recent episode of TWIT that their downloads were around 50,000 oer episode (i.e. per week). This idiot User:Aaron Brenneman is simply going around to all the articles I've done and tagging them for deletion. If you have a look at his talk section you will see that he has been warned on numerous occasions. Can someone please ban him for good as he is being a real arsehole. Just have a look at his user page and he has a book labelled 'Dispute Resolution', so he obviously gets a kick out of pissing people off.
To Admins: Please take note that the user who has tagged this article for deletion has surprising done so with many of the other articles I have created/editted. He obviously likes the conflict it causes (as can be seen in the 'dispute box' which is on his user page). Treelovinhippie 05:41, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I think it goes without saying that Treelovinhippie's comments here and on his user page (both exhibiting ignorance of wikipedia policy and community norms, and an insulting lack of respect for his fellow wikipedians) warrants more attention from administrators than a perfectly reasonable AfD. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 05:47, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Notable Canadian vidcast.--Nicodemus75 05:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
What are we using to gauge a vidcast's notability? - brenneman(t)(c) 05:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The information is all right as far as I can tell and it is something that people would be looking on Wikipedia about if they wanted to know some information that they cannot find on the actual vidcasts. It isn't a small thing either. I knew nothing about either of the hosts, nothing of the show and I started watching at show 1 way back in June with only a Digg link to lead me to the show. It certainly deserves its own page with a description on Wikipedia.
Doesn't count without a signature! Marskell 09:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete unless some source other than the creators/cast can be cited as evidence of popularity. Right now, there's no evidence whatsoever that this is popular, and a fair amount of evidence that it isn't. - A Man In Black (Talk | Contribs) 06:45, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Evidence. For those of you people who don't have a clue as to the popularity of commandN....
Now as I have stated before, it is often difficult to state exact figures on the number of downloads per podcast, as often these are distributed via bittorrent (which is very difficult to track) and the podcasts end up all over the net with various other sources distributing it.
As I have said, also, the host/s of this show have featured on TWiT at least once (and in most cases more). TWiT is the number one podcast on the internet and has been at the top of the iTunes charts for a long time. They are a technology podcast and only feature people who are interesting and are well-known (i.e. this podcasts' host). That in itself should be enough to justify its popularity.
Another thing I'll post is a link to a post on http://www.digg.com (a social bookmarking site). Basically the number of 'diggs' is how many people have clicked to 'digg' it and is an indication of its popularity. See an example of a digg article posted for this podcast here: http://www.digg.com/technology/commandN_Episode_10_Up.
Delete per ManInBlack. Also half-advert: "so be sure to subscribe to one of the many commandN feeds to be notified when a new episode is released." Marskell 09:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Then edit it if you think it's an advert... isn't that the point of wikipedia?
Delete. Encyclopedic notability not established by the article, which looks like advertising. Gamaliel 11:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Non-notable podcast. android79 13:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, non-notable per A Man in Black and dpbsmith, despite the best efforts of the author to convince us otherwise. Seriously, this thing is supposed to be a popular Internet phenomenon and draws no Usenet discussion. I'm not sure that's ever happened before. And I doubt it's happened now. Lord Bob 14:46, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - The fact that the hosts of CommandN have featured on TWiT is meaningless. Because they have appeared on a more notable podcast and were previously featured on a cable show that automatically confers notability on their current project? That's specious logic. In my opinion a podcast is like a blog; there has to be excellent evidence of overwhelming popularity before it can be considered notable enough to merit a standalone article. At this point simply referencing CommandN in the hosts own wiki articles would be sufficient. For due dilligence sake, I followed the links provided as evidence. [1] came up with a "That item was not found" message. I went to [2] and did a search on CommandN. Average "diggs" for an episode were around 450 with a max of 510 for ep10. So 510 people voted for it, compared to 1900+ for a story on Google Office that has been there for a mere 14 hours. That's not overwhelming evidence of the popularity/notability of CommmandN. Looking around [3] I can't find any information on how they tally votes. Do they only count unique votes or is every click counted? After taking a look at this, I'm voting Delete based on my research and the research done by Dpbsmith.--Isotope23 15:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete non-notable, probably self-advertisement. --Isolani 16:14, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Actually no, I created the entire article (pretty much) and I have absolutely no affiliation with them at all. Treelovinhippie 00:29, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
delete not convinced this is notable; poor article. — brighterorange (talk) 16:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Then edit it! The article was even poorer before than it is now. Give it time and people will create a better article.
Keep - You Ppl are mean, not like its hurting anyone being here? Whats the problem?
Keep - CommandN is in the top 100 in the podcast section of the canadian iTunes music store and it's one of the first canadian vidcast.
Weak Keep Having just said not convinced I now find 55,000 hits on Yahoo. (OK, so I know it's not Google but 55,000!). How many of these are more than repeat directory entries or the like I don't know. Don't like the article either. Please rewrite and make it less of an ad. Marcus22 19:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
First, what did you search on? commandN by itself is a problem, because it gets hundreds of irrelevant hits due to its frequent use in programs, e.g. here. When I try "commandN vidcast" on Yahoo I get less than 400 hits. How would you interpret commandN vidcast getting ZERO hits in Google Groups (USENET?) (Come to think of it, I'm a little surprised that nobody advocating for keeping this article has bothered to make a USENET posting about it just to prove me wrong). Dpbsmith(talk) 20:33, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Dpb. The Yahoo search was just a straight search for CommandN. As the greater part of the hits seem to include reference to vidcasting - but by no means all! - I left it at that. 55,000 is an impressive figure but I am by no means convinced. Hence the weak bit of the keep. As to USENET, I have no idea about that. (ie. I have no idea about USENET). You are right, however, that "CommandN vidcast" draws less than 400 hits. And Google offers no lifeline! Marcus22 12:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - commandN offers a unique view on technology from 3 hosts who know there tech. While the article may need improving it should be kept. Vidcast aside the two main host work on a technology TV show and sometimes have an inside line on what is new and notable in the tech world. Other podcasts such as TWIT www.twit.tv and diggnation www.diggnation.com have a wikipedia pages and are same type of podcast as commandN.
Keep - This is a nice and very informative program
Keep - Heard about commandN tonight on the popular Podcast TWiT and was wanting more information, and found it here. Am amused by this Aaron guys rants, but nevertheless, he should be ignored and this should be kept. For those that are complaining about it being an ad, or messy...just clean it up. --Underdog 06:07, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Always happy to keep the punters laughing. - brenneman(t)(c) 06:21, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Very popular canadian vidcast.
Keep - First of all, you guys seem unusually bent on deleting this page. Secondly, Google is a suitable test if you use it properly. If you've ever taken Statistics, you'll learn that survey results can easily be biased by the wording of the question. Your criteria include the term "vidcast", which doesn't appear anywhere on the CommandN wiki, nor anywhere on commandn.tv, the official website. Biased, don't you think? If a simple search for "CommandN" doesn't satisfy you because the popularity of commandn.net (an artist group in Tokyo) is interfering with results, all you need to do is include conventional terms--"commandn podcast OR vidcast OR videoblogging" returns 53,400 hits. If you're *still* not convinced, a simple paging through the results to view contexts should help. It has only 2 Google Groups hits, but if you know anything about the unquestionably popular podcast This Week In Tech (or TWiT), that podcast gets only 44 hits, with the benefit of a dozen former US television personalities.
Keep. Popular vidcast
Keep. Excellent vidcast. Very informative and funny. MacGeek 00:32, 13 October 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.