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. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 09:12, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Soccerpulse[edit]

Was prodded, deprodded, and improperly reprodded with the concern: fantasy games on a forum are completely non-notable. This article is simply for promotion of a forum, that likes to promote itself by spamming. Delete per original prod. Kimchi.sg 06:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The forum is also notable for the sharing of videos of football, with it recieving over 300,000 hits for videos during the world cup and such file sharing is also big in the news making it a notable forum. Finally if BigSoccer is worthy of a wikipedia article as claimed by an above poster who wants to delete SP's article, then why is SP not, it's the second biggest soccer forum compared to BS and is grower at a faster rate than BS has been for some time.

The forum is notable in various ways then, and is listed as within the 60 most popular soccer site on Alexa (outranking 90% of Official English Premier League Clubs Official Sites in terms of traffic), and within Alexa's top 11,000 over the past few weeks average, it's a major site that deserves a wikipedia article and if you let the article be finished then you will see it's notability and stop being so aggressive and making misinformed comments .

Also I notice some of you are BS members, I believe that ruins your supposed neutrality and thus shouldn't be making a move to delete this article, as it's clearly biased. Ajp100688 22:20, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response - For what it's worth, I am not an active BigSoccer member (I stopped posting a couple of years ago). And I never said BS was worthy of a Wiki article, but rather, that I was surprised that there isn't one. Big difference.
I don't know if a message board even warrants an article and I won't be starting a BS article any time soon, but I can see a case being made for BS. Not so much for its size, but its influence and access to people and information that other sites of the type usually don't have.
But I'm not going to write it because there just isn't enough third-party information out there. And whatever information is available will make it read like to this article; the introduction reads just like a press release, even if that wasn't the intent (and btw, "outranking 90% of Official English Premier League Clubs Official Sites in terms of traffic" isn't all that special when you put the number into perspective and is pure PR-speak).
Out of curiosity, how do you know which editors are BigSoccer members? Ytny 00:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response - I had a forum spammed with soccerpulse links, don't talk to me about evidence. And why should illegally sharing videos make a forum notable? Why should being a BS member matter? If one were an admin or moderator a case could certainly be made for them being biased. But I have no connection to BS other than going there for information. I don't see how this would make someone biased. Revolutionfan 03:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response - Well the original "rod" by you says "article that only promotes itself by spamming" - not exactly a fact is it?, just your opinion, and i believe that you do not realise the scale of football videos and compilation that is available from the site, it certainly has affected the way that fans view football. Not only are the videos only accessed by the 50000 members of the forum, but videos made available by members are uploaded to websites such as youtube, metacafe, etc. where it is being made available for a very large audience. Thevmail 16:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

'Response' Finding out if someone is a BS member is pretty easy, just use their forum search to find the members username, as it'd be pretty uncommon for two different people to be using that username on different sites, it's likely to be the same person.

As for the information Alexa is a verifiable third party source that everyone recognises as being unbiased and useful, it backs up any statements made on the article in every way. If you wish for the article to come across as more neutral then it can be subject to a rewrite, thats not what Im arguing, what I'm arguing is it's right to exist, especially in the light of it's connections to Adidas and the English FA.

The outranking of official websites is very impressive I feel as they have an established brand name and userbase and should attract high rates of traffic and for an independent and largely unknown to the world website to be drawing traffic greater than them is a great achievement.

As for Revolutionfan, your bias shows through by just how agressive you are, firstly as for your accusation that your forum was spammed by SP, you should have reported it to the SP admins and they'd have dealt with it, they are hugely against spamming and as I have said have had forums closed for continued nonsense, secondly it depends what you consider spamming, if one of your members posted a link to sp saying come here and see such and such video, and it was a long standing memeber that was just generally trying to help someone, thats far from spamming, it's just linking.

Whatever spamming issue you had, and indeed if it was spam, it has nothing to do with SP as a site, as I've said many times it persues a hardline anti-spam stance. And the sharing of videos is not illegal, no one is making any money off the videos, none of them have been ripped from copyrighted sources such as DVDs (the forum even has a note saying any ripped DVDs posted will result in a ban for the user) and the actual content is not subject to licensing regarding it's distibution, only it's broadcast on TV stations.

Essentially I have given many good reasons why this site is NOTABLE and why it should exist on wikipedia, and you guys have given no real reason as to remove it, other than it sounds somewhat un-neutral, if thats the case then it requires a rewrite not a removal. Ajp100688 17:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

'Response' Yes, I am biased, because I WAS spammed (not linking, I'm not a moron so stop being so patronizing). I'm sure you'd be biased too if I had spammed your site. I run several forums and have not put any, nor plan to put any on wikipedia. I don't see how forums are encyclopedia worthy, especially the results of fantasy games (and its teams' logos) on them, which is just about the only thing in this article. Revolutionfan 17:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response Well for your information there are 210 forums which have articles on wikipedia, maybe you do not feel that internet phenomena are worthy of articles on wikipedia (how ironic since wikipedia is an internet phenomenon itself) but others maybe do feel so, i believe the article is in need of editing, not deletion. Thevmail 18:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response Once again revolutionfan, read what I'm typing. The...article...is...not finished, the prediction league stuff was only added to flesh out the article as it was the first information available, the rest of the article is awaiting a write up, and scans of the official letters sent by the FA and Adidas etc. If you deleted every article before it was finished, wikipedia would be empty.

As for your supposed spammed forum, whats it's name ? Ajp100688 18:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Ajp100688 A few things worth pointing out, not necessarily in favor of or opposition to the delete:
  • I searched the user names found here in the BigSoccer search engine and Revolutionfan was the only match. So I'm either doing something wrong or we disagree on the definition of "some".
  • I never questioned the validity of Alexa results.
  • I did, however, suggest that you put the 90% number into perspective. So that's 18 clubs out of 20, which sounds impressive on the surface. But you have to consider the following:
  • Most of the remaining 18 clubs have limited appeal beyond their own fan base. The majority of soccer fans in the world have little interest in West Brom, let alone its official website.
  • Even if a club has widespread appeal, its fans can find out everything they need to know without ever visiting the official site. There are newspapers, rumor sites and message boards that offer the same, if not more, information than official sites.
  • A message board, by its nature, attracts more traffic than a typical club site. People visit club sites for specific information or transaction (say, tickets or official merch). People return to message board to post and read responses. The act of composing and posting a single message probably requires just as many page views (which is what Alexa rankings are based on) as a typical visit to an official club site. When you factor in the return visit, browsing through forums and threads, there's no competition.
So outranking 18 official websites isn't a meaningless feat by any standard, but it's not as impressive as you might think. I'm not saying Soccerpulse isn't a major site. I'm just saying that outranking official club sites doesn't tell us much one way or the other because it's not an even comparison.
  • FWIW, TV broadcasts are copyrighted sources and posting them on the internet is just as illegal as ripping footage from a DVD. Any video posted in a forum without the expressed written consent of the copyright holder is "illegal video". I don't think it matters for the sake of this discussion, but it's worth pointing out. Ytny 18:30, 20 July 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.
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