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 No consensus.—Quarl(talk) 2006-12-27 05:28Z
Entirely unsourced. Not notable. Facts such as the type of PC and which Lunix distro the server uses is absolutely non-interesting. SchmuckyTheCat 19:20, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The site is substantial and has a large user base. It may require a rewrite but it should not be deleted. --J-Star 19:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So, you can reference those assertions to a reliable source? SchmuckyTheCat 19:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Visit the site and see for youself. The mount of material added and teh activity should speak for itself. --J-Star 20:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No it doesn't. You can't use the site to support its own inclusion. See Wikipedia:No Original Research. You have to cite reliable third party sources. Also, because "substantial" and "large user base" are a very subjective (what is the threshold for "large"? What does "substantial" mean?), it cannot be used as an argument for inclusion either. ColourBurst 05:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just Google it then... [1]. There's your source. Counter-argument to the rest is that "not notable" and "non-interresting" are also subjective. --J-Star 06:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Google is not a source. What does it say about the subject? That it has X webpages that contain the word "Elfwood" which may or may not be related. The hits that I can see are to personal webpages, blogs, and forums, which are unreliable. ColourBurst 05:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Claims "Elfwood is the largest science fiction and fantasy art site in the world" which would make for a notability argument. This is not OR, but autobiographical statement. See WP:Auto for inclusion criteria. Also found in books here [2]. I'd say any site that makes it into a top list of sites on the internet is a keeper. And frankly see for yourself is NOT original research. It's called examining the subject and seeing what is known about it. And hey, if you think that facts such as the type of PC being used, or the software distro, maybe we should delete Google platform or the software and hardware section of Wikipedia. Of course, you could just recognize that one sentence that is part of a larger article is not something you should throw on the AfD. FrozenPurpleCube 07:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And here's a bit of news coverage [3] FrozenPurpleCube 07:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with "see for yourself" not being OR. It requires a user to make a subjective interpretation about the significance of a site. The claim that it is "the largest science fiction and fantasy art site in the world" is also a claim that needs to be sourced (that's not a trivial assertion). ColourBurst 05:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Um, it is sourced. To them. Was what I said not clear to you? That's what I meant by autobiographical statement. Besides, looking at a subject is important in making a determination about an article. That's not OR, that's called being informed. If you reject the idea of doing your own examination to see what there is to know about a given subject because it's original research, then I'd say we've got an entirely different concept as to what things mean. Now certainly, a simple google search won't reveal the good sources from the bad, that requires some real effort, but as the link above shows, they can be found. FrozenPurpleCube 15:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And here's another one: [4] Apparently, they won an award from SFcrowsnest, which claims to be Europe's most popular science fiction and fantasy site. FrozenPurpleCube 15:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If it has sources to build an article, then rebuild the article on the sources. As it stands now, the article is unsourced. SchmuckyTheCat 15:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, sources are a good thing, and more would be better. I don't see any reason to outright rebuild the article though. It's not that bad. Even the part about the servers it used was hardly of great concern. I'm still troubled that you thought that was a reason to argue for deletion. FrozenPurpleCube 16:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, the site's Alexa [5] ranking is in the 6,000s, which often serves as a useful benchmark. FrozenPurpleCube 16:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And hey, here's the San Jose Mercury: [6]. Yeah, you need a subscription for the full article, but it's still a valid source. FrozenPurpleCube 16:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral, leaning to Weak Keep with the Gamegrene and the San Jose Mercury articles. Again, claims like "popular", "one of the first", etc have to be sourced in the article itself but that's not an AfD issue. ColourBurst 18:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, Here's an article published in one of the largest newspapers in Sweden back in 2003 [7]
Keep Wired Magazine published a note about the founding of a new web site called "Lothlorien" in October 1996, which later on changed name into Elfwood. [8]
WTF. (Note: I do not hand this sort of Deletion Recommendations lightly. Not lightly at all.) Obvious keep. The site has been around forever and is one of the best known art galleries on the web. I'm highly surprised if this is not mentioned in some source or other. And please keep arguments that can be fixed in cleanup out of the nomination - deleting boring content is not an issue that needs a sysop bit. AfD is not Cleanup®. (But since I was around, I deleted the bit about hardware anyway. =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 13:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. I think we've established that mere popularity, or notability within a limited community, isn't enough to warrant an article for this sort of site. Tevildo 13:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think any such thing has been established. Not that I'd consider the fantasy art community to be especially limited. FrozenPurpleCube 15:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fantasy and SF are quite mainstream genres these days. Not just for us computer geeks anymore. =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 22:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The site's size, user-base, community and vast collection of user-created content means it is very well known and it's an excellent example of what the online fantasy community get up to. I would say it's similar in many ways to deviantART, which we certainly don't seem to have an issue with writing an article about. I would be confused if Wikipedia represented deviantART but not Elfwood, even if the latter is obviously not as large or as all-encompassing as the former.--StoneColdCrazy 18:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It has. However, if the site is popular enough, it's the duty of people who know anything about the site to research sources and write about it. If people say "This site is more popular than that famous religious figure, why don't you have an article about it?" and we say "We don't have an article about it because we don't trust anyone but honest people, plain and simple", we're on dangerous waters. When people think of "No information is preferred over unsourced information", they regrettably think of the Nuke instead of Getting Rid of the Dubious Stuff. Verifiability is not a deletion reason in case of deviantART; at worst, it'd be time to trim away anything that's completely unattributable. Stub about a famous website is better than no article at all. Likewise here. Why is it that people really don't seem to want unsourced material to live in the article history? In closing, AfD is not Cleanup and in 90% of cases, lack of sources is a cleanup issue, not a deletion reason. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 22:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This is all a load of nonesense, Elfwood deserves a place, simply because it was the first and largest, does it matter what's occured since then. Besides in my Book, Devart is not a fantasy site, it just allows fantasy along with all the rest of the content.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.136.11.222 (talk • contribs) 23:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]
Epilogue is another Fantasy site, but that is in another category entirely, and excludes all amateur artists so it will never get as large as Elfwood. So what is the fuss about? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.136.11.222 (talk • contribs) 23:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]
Delete per nom-DESU 23:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The AMW.COM source is completely irrelevant - Elfwood is not mentioned anywhere in the article, and the only page that even talks about her kidnapper only says they met on "the Internet" - NOT on Elfwood. Her Elfwood page is also not a source. I went back to review my Delete vote and found it's worse than I thought - there are NO sources establishing notability, and as such, flagrantly violates WP:WEB. --Neverborn 21:55, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If there are good sources then re-write the article based on them. SchmuckyTheCat 15:57, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
AfD is not the way to get people to re-write an article. Articles don't get deleted because there are no sources present in it. Articles get deleted when there are no sources at all, which is obviously not the case here. Please keep that in mind in the future and search for sources yourself before you nominate something for deletion. --Conti|✉ 16:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: A very old and well established site- it has many many artists, many people may want to read about it on Wikipedia, there are third party sources available as was displayed by Conti... Also, I came across this deletion debate because I was checking some info on the Elfwood article, and I had heard of it before I came to Wikipedia. Ok, a lot of what I said isn't Wiki Policy, but it is certainly reasoning for this article to be kept. Frankly, I think it is ridiculous that this has been nominated for deletion. J Milburn 02:33, 26 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.