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. The only argument to keep this article has been that it's a useful way to find these gateways... as that is not a policy or site consensus backed argument it is irrelevant. I'm sure a list of phone numbers of businesses would be useful in some way as well, but Wikipedia is not a directory. — Coffee // have a cup // essay // 10:02, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of SMS gateways[edit]

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Spam magnet. Not an article, just a data dump and mostly inaccurate information. Nothing properly sourced. This proposed for deletion 4 years ago, with no consensus reached. akaDruid (talk) 11:36, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Seems like a straight-forward "Wikipedia is not a directory" matter. Tarc (talk) 12:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It's useful information, but it's not encyclopedic content: it's ephemeral and is indeed a directory. None of the gateways are notable though some are/were run by notable companies as a minor part of their business. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:17, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:43, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:43, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - The page contains useful reference information that does not seem to be available elsewhere. If it does not currently meet Wikipedia scrutiny, I'd suggest upgrading it rather than deleting it. I disagree with the notion that it contains "mostly inaccurate information". The info here is mostly up to date and is almost entirely useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HBrydon (talk • contribs) 14:17, 23 October 2013 (UTC)HBrydon (talk) 04:35, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep Suprised to see this nominated after using this article this afternoon. I was searching for the 'EE.co.uk' sms gateway domain address this afternoon on both the EE and Oranges site, and couldn't find it. Eventually found the article, after a G search. So it's encyclopedic and clearly useful. scope_creep talk 17:54 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Delete. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a directory. - MrOllie (talk) 20:06, 24 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment So it's directory, let's delete it, job done? What about the value of the information itself. It is reference information and encyclopedic. It is extremely hard to come by such a list. It would take many days work to sift through company websites, forums etc to compile the list. So it does have intrinsic value. There is no single site on the web that contains a list of this type. scope_creep talk 13:34 25 October 2013 (UTC)
The phone book has intrinsic value and takes a lot of effort to compile, but we don't use Wikipedia to host it. The text is CC by SA licensed, I suggest you upload it on some project where directories are in scope. - MrOllie (talk) 11:43, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep? What makes something like this a directory, while something like list of web browsers is not? One could say that a directory is something about which I am only really interested in a single entry any time I come to visit it. But in the case of the list of sms gateways, I'm really interested in any that meet a particular list of criteria (e.g. free, don't require an account, work for a particular destination); this is actually not so different from what I'm after when I look at list of web browsers and comparison of web browser engines, where I'm looking for any potential browsers that meet my criteria (e.g. free, doesn't require an account, runs on my platform, supports https...). Is it simply a directory because phone numbers/web addresses are involved? But then what about other pages (most of them for web browsers, for example) that list a home page for the browser? Of course, the home pages for the browsers aren't included on the list page, but arguably that would be a more useful (but harder to maintain) page if they were. One could argue that it's a directory because the primary pieces of information about a given SMS gateway that are interesting are contained entirely in the list (e.g. the carrier and email address) so that it doesn't make sense to have independent pages for each gateway, and so it's less a compilation of links to other similar wikipedia pages and more a compilation of contact information. In that case, perhaps an appropriate alternative would be to convert this to a "list of entities known to provide sms gateways", and then link to individual sites (e.g. for the cellular carrier or for an external service), and add the sms-gateway info to the page for each carrier. Seems like that strikes a nice balance between keeping useful information available and keeping wikipedia well organized. 75.80.182.162 (talk) 19:45, 27 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Every time you edit Wikipedia, the words "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable" appear above the box. It's pretty much the first rule of Wikipedia. Nothing on this page has been verified. If anyone can find any reliably sourced information then it belongs into the main SMS Gateway article anyway. akaDruid (talk) 15:12, 28 October 2013 (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.