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 per the found sources. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OpenArena[edit]

Fails to meet Wikipedia's General Notability Guideline. No reliable third-party sources to assert notability within the article, or were found via web search or news archive. Existing sources are self-published information from the makers of the game itself, or other unreliable sources, and therefore cannot be used to assert the notability of this mod. Randomran (talk) 22:31, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me, but what "third party sources" does this article need? OpenArena exists. There is a main page, a ModDB page, a lot of reviews, and hell, there's even a package for Debian! What kind of proof do you need? Kick52 (talk) 08:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- The issue is not whether it exists, but whether it can be considered notable under Wikipedia's notability guidelines. -SpuriousQ (talk) 18:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- It needs reliable sources. ModDB is not considered a reliable source. Self-published sources aren't going to cut it either. GameSpy, GameSpot -- stuff like that. Those are reliable sources. See WP:VG/RS for a few ideas on what sources might help. Randomran (talk) 03:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been added to the list of video game related deletions. MrKIA11 (talk) 22:35, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom. MrKIA11 (talk) 22:35, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Per nom. Gears of War 2 23:23, 2 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- All right, I refrained from posting something in this direction in the case of the second, unjustified 'Nomination for Deletion' of the article 'DeFRaG,' but now it's time, I guess. Don't get me wrong, this is all but intended as an ad hominem attack, plus I have the highest respect for those who go for sartorial lengths in order to keep Wikipedia clean and on high standards ... nevertheless this is the second time I witness Randomran nominate an article for deletion and MrKIA11 and Gears of War immediately seconding by a mere 'Delete per nom[ination].' In the case of the 'DeFRaG' article Randomran made a mistake and was ready to confess it, because the notability could be proven from sources already cited within the article. Mistakes happen, as we agreed in the meanwhile closed discussion, no problem. But both, MrKIA11 and Gears of War, could have discovered that a mistake was made. They did not, instead quickly wrote 'Delete per nom.' Those three words were written, I suspect, without ever having a sufficient look at the article in question. If Visor, who has much improved my first version of the article, and brought it through a peer-review which resulted in promotion to B-Class (by the way, the nomination for deletion ridiculed the whole peer-review principle and the assessment scale), hadn't watched the article and hadn't contacted me and others, the article would have been deleted unrightfully. We are talking about 'OpenArena' here, not about 'DeFRaG,' I know. My point is that I am fearing a duplicity of events to happen. The 'OpenArena' article is not as advanced as 'DeFRaG,' granted, but still it is all from clear that its subject is non-notable. Why are articles like that so quickly nominated for deletion, without having a real look into the matter? Why not tag it for 'References are missing,' or however it is called in Wikipedia-lingo. Why aren't other ways proposed or thought of? For example, I deem it worthwhile to discuss if 'OpenArena' shouldn't be merged into ioquake3 ... and so on. Once again, I harbour the highest respect for you, who put so much work into keeping Wikipedia on high standards, but please, don't nominate for deletion as fast. And before seconding a nomination for deletion, have a look in the matter first, or we will risk to loose good articles, or those with potential to develope. zeph (talk) 23:22, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Well, the game was featured in a 1/12/07 GamesForWindows podcast at the least. I myself, hardly edit the article other than removing some vandalism and correcting some links. SPOILERS: i'm the "maker of the game", so please don't accuse random players editing this article as "the makers". If you're going to delete this, then delete BZFlag too. Leileilol (talk) 08:36, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please read Wikipedia:Inclusion is not an indicator of notability and WP:WAX. We are not dealing with other articles. We are dealing with this one. If other similar articles have the same problems, then they will be dealt with in due time. There are only a small amount of editors compared to the tens of thousands of articles out there. MuZemike (talk) 20:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - OpenArena's only been around for 2-3 years (scroll down), and getting noticed in a podcast for Games for Windows: The Official Magazine (formerly a precursor to a major print magazine, and now essentially 1UP.com, either way with an audience of thousands -- not just "some video game website") just months ago is no small feat. The game itself is notable and/or no contest within the community of Quake modifications and free software shooters -- there is no other close-to-drop-in Free/libre equivalent of the original Quake III Arena assets, much like Open Quartz and FreeDoom -- even to the point of Kick52's mention of it a Debian package, also no small feat.

The size or specifics of a community is by itself, especially looking outside-in, not necessarily enough to gauge notability.

Seconding the other Keep entries for August 2nd, notability for mods is hard to come by, particularly outside of this particular community -- if it's unfamiliar territory, "notable" may not seem so obvious. As Visor noted, why not simply a ((References)) instead of deleting entirely, if there are not enough sources? If you'd like a newspaper interview even mentioning your favorite ioquake3-derived video games (outside of anti-violence-legislation etc.), or Seiken Densetsu 3 or something -- it's probably not going to happen. Thoobsente (talk) 23:31, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- If it's probably not going to happen, then it's probably not suitable for inclusion in wikipedia. Randomran (talk) 03:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm sorry Randomran, but that criterion alone (lack of a newspaper interview) conceivably excludes about 2/5s of all English Wikipedia entries, notable ones well included.

If there isn't much in addressing the Keeps, is there a problem with marking ((notability)), instead of deletion for what seems to be solely for that reason? Thoobsente (talk) 05:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, a lack of notability is a reason for deletion. In fact, if the notability issue is that blatant, it's a reason for speedy deletion. Randomran (talk) 06:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to partly agree. WP:AFD recommends that such articles that may be candidates for deletion be appropriately tagged first before being nominated. However, using the tag is not a substitute for deletion; it tells users that someone must find something to establish notability, or action will soon be taken (normally, AfD). MuZemike (talk) 06:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Maybe the people discussing this article should click the next Google search page before labeling this page for deletion. There are a few reviews and articles from websites (linuxtome, linux.com) that I've seen referenced around Wikipedia. And why not ModDB?

If my post didn't sway you, then if you do delete, at least throw this in to the Quake III page. It's an item worthy of inclusion, but if you guys are really going to be stubborn about it, then feel free to wipe it from existence.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.213.218.195 (talk) 13:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - ModDB not considered a reliable source. I suspect "linuxtome" is a self-published source. But if you actually posted the references, we could take a closer look. Randomran (talk) 15:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Unfortunately, I have reviewed the sources that Google has presented. While many of them I trust and read on a regular basis, it appears that Wikipedia does not (after reviewing the sources page). Because this game has limited press within such sites, I am sorry to say that this has no case within the rules. I feel, however, that this is a topic worthy of merit and inclusion in the Quake III area, and should be included on the Quake III page. I suggest expanding the "Other Versions" section already set aside for OA-like items, until the game becomes more popular or garners more press attention. To delete it fully would be taking more attention from a really well-made and interesting game. (edit: I retract my statements due to the comment following this. Obviously I was looking in the wrong place. Way to go!)

Strong keep because there are reliable third party sources ... from the academic realm. Here are three examples:

EISERT, PETER AND PHILIPP FECHTELER. 2007. Remote rendering of computer games. Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications (SIGMAP), Barcelona, Spain, July 2007.

PARRY, LUCAS. 2007. L3DGEWorld 2.1 Input & Output Specifications. CAIA Technical Report 070808A, August 2007.

Abstract: This technical report briefly describes L3DGEWorld 2.1, a product of the L3DGE Project [1]. L3DGEWorld is a data visualisation tool based on the OpenArena derivative of the Quake III Arena game engine, being used in the monitoring and control of networks. The report describes the input interface specification for conveying information to the L3DGEWorld server for real-time visualisation and representation as a number of different metrics, and the output abstraction layer through which actions are conveyed from within the virtual environment and made available to external output daemons to interpret and perform real world actions based upon.

POWERS, SHAWN. 2007. Quake, meet GPL; GPL, meet Quake. Linux Journal 2007(164): Article No. 8. ISSN: 1075-3583

Unearthing those was a matter of seconds ... am I the only one who is able to use scholar.google.com? ;-) I know that there is more besides these results of a quick'n'dirty search, but it is somewhere deep down my files and I have not the time at hand at the moment, forgive me please. zeph (talk) 20:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Students for Free Culture is featuring OpenArena as the second game to be played in the Free Culture Gaming project, immediately after Battle for Wesnoth. As the successor to Quake III Arena, Open Arena is one of the most mature and accessible open source cross-platform games in existence. I was shocked to discover that its article is up for deletion. I also second the strong keep due to its frequent mention in academic resources mentioned above. --Skyfaller (talk) 19:30, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep OpenArena is a notable computer game. Sources presented by Zephyrin xirdal are reliable third party sources. The article passes WP:N. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 08:36, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above. Another reference: [1]. --MrStalker ^(talk) 11:20, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above Tovian (talk) 15:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above Montag (talk) 01:59, 9 August 2008 (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.