Wikipediocracy – Oh dear! What a mess. The point that everyone seems to have missed is that the original SNOW close was an NAC and therefore, almost by definition against process as SNOW is almost always inappropriate for an NAC - especially for an article as controversial as this. Further, the snow close truncated debate on the sourcing that one of the participants subsequently analysed in more detail and felt lacking. This is part of the reason why a SNOW close of anything the slightest bit controversial is an incredibly foolish idea (and yes I have done my own share of foolish SNOW closes). As such, those arguing for a relist are the ones putting forward a view that is supported by both policy and long standing practice at DRV. The sourcing is in-play, requires discussion, and DRV is not the forum to consider it. To move things forward, I'm truncating the DRV and immediately relisting AFD 2 as this is for sure how I would have been closing this DRV in however many days hence of pointless argument I will be saving by closing it now. For future, SS should have DRVed the original SNOW and I or another regular DRV admin would have reopened the discussion per WP:NAC at the time and saved this whole stupid mess. Having opened AFD 2 the optimal outcome would have been to leave it be but I wouldn't blame Nyttend as they are not a regular here and wouldn't have known how this would have been bound to play out. – Spartaz ^Humbug! 14:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Wikipediocracy (talk`\|`edit`\|`history`\|`logs`\|`links`\|`watch) (XfD`\|`restore) After this AFD resulted in a decision of "keep", someone decided to challenge the decision by opening a new AFD, rather than by coming here. I've closed the AFD procedurally in favor of coming here. The nominator's rationale is as follows. I have no opinion on the matter, so I'm neutral. Nyttend (talk) 22:12, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] I completely realize that this article was recently taken to AfD. Heck, I realize that I voted Keep in that AfD. However, after comments by others about the sources, i've taken a closer look at them, which I didn't really do previously. And what I have found does seem to indicate a violation of WP:SIGCOV here, where the source coverage is extremely trivial. While this was occasionally mentioned in the previous AfD, it does not appear to have been properly represented and that is why I am opening this new discussion. I will now go through the sources in the article to show what I mean. This source is used to reference the Bicholim conflict hoax material, of which on Wikipediocracy it states, "Users of the Wikipediocracy forum have pinned down a likely suspect, however, a Wikipedian who went by the handle "A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a."" That is the entirety of the mention of Wikipediocracy within the article, clearly trivial. This is a recent source about the Qworty incident. on Wikipediocracy, it states, "The Qworty fiasco came to Leonard’s attention, he writes, when members of Wikipediocracy, a site that details instances of Wikipedian fakery and bias, contacted him." Also a trivial mention, not even counting that it is referencing information from a different news article. This article could actually be an issue of original research being used in the Wikipediocracy article. At the bottom of it, it states "H/T Wikipediocracy", with that being a link to a tweet by the Wikipediocracy Twitter that itself just links to two diff changes in a Wikipedia article. H/T generally means "Heard through" on Twitter, but that is certainly not enough information to back up the sentence currently in the Wikipediocracy article that it is attached to. This isn't even a real mention of the site at all. This article is about somewhat recent discussions with Jimbo about Kazakh Wikipedia. Its comments on Wikipediocracy amount to, "Wales was responding from comments by Andreas Kolbe, a moderator at Wikipediocracy, an external forum whose members are often harshly critical of Wikimedia's management." This is, again, a trivial mention, and really, from what the rest of the article says, is a better reference to be used on Andreas than Wikipediocracy. This source is about Gibraltarpedia. About Wikipediocracy, it states, "Kolbe wrote on Wikipediocracy, a site often critical of Wikimedia’s top brass." Again, this article has a fair amount to say on Andreas, but only half a sentence on Wikipediocracy. Even more trivial than trivial. This source I could go on about its reliability, with it being The Register and about its author, Andrew Orlowski, but I have no need to. Because this article makes absolutely no mention of Wikipediocracy at all (other than in a screenshot of a Wikipedia conversation). Honestly, I have no idea why this source is in the article, other than for POV pushing. This source, likewise, has no mention of Wikipediocracy and is merely being used to source the statement "co-founder of Wikipedia" for Larry Sanger, which doesn't really seem necessary, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. This source, like the previous, confers no notability to Wikipediocracy, not even through a trivial mention. Now i'll go back to the source that I skipped and saved for last here, because it is the one we have to focus on, that offers slightly more to the subject. However, it is about the recent Qworty incident and is the only source of any real length on Wikipediocracy, so we also have to bring up the question on whether this single event adds much by itself. The article that I am referring to is this one. Now you can read it yourself and it certainly has a lot of references to Wikipediocracy and the information the writer was given by members there. However, it also says pretty much nothing about the site itself. Really, other than the mentions of their involvement in giving this Wikipedia information to the author, the article has nothing to say about the Wikipediocracy site itself. And that's it, in a fair bit of length. If there was a single source that discussed the site in any length, even a paragraph, then this might be a different discussion. If there was anything about the site's foundings, its origins, even more about its members. But there's nothing. There are references to the site and that's all. And as is often noted in AfD discussions, a bunch of trivial mentions don't add up to much. Trivial mentions are still trivial. And, in most cases, these are even worse than trivial. Usually what we call "trivial mentions" have at least two sentences or something on a subject, but these are, apparently, the most trivial among the trivial. I see no real argument for notability here, once you actually take a look at the sources. Silver seren^C 04:02, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Overturn and relist Due to the potential for !voters with a conflict of interest, the AfD should have been left open longer. AutomaticStrikeout ? 22:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Could you please describe this conflict of interest ? Is it not the case that every editor has an inherent conflict of interest in a topic like Wikipediocracy, given its symbiotic relationship with Wikimedia/Wikipedia. Nick (talk) 22:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Giving the AfD more time gives all points of view a greater opportunity to weigh in. AutomaticStrikeout ? 23:25, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Overturn and delete (first preference) or relist (second preference). I'm not sure about the wisdom of not letting the new AfD play out, but here we are, anyway. Silver seren is right to point out the degree of WP:COATRACKing and puffery in this article. Virtually everything in it depends on trivial passing mentions. User:Steve has done a useful exercise to strip out anything from the article that isn't a trivial passing mention - see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Steve/Sandbox&oldid=556316884 . Without puffery, the article reduces to four sentences which are mostly about the recent Qworty issue which, other than the linked Salon story, seems to have failed to arouse any significant commentary that I've seen in reliable sources. As others have said, it's hard to argue for significant notability based on one single news article. In the most recent AfD, some editors have argued that a single news article can convey significant notability but that simply isn't compliant with policy. Others have argued in this and the previous AfD that the article should be kept because the subject might be more notable in future, but again that's not compliant with policy (WP:CRYSTAL etc). Silver and Steve's analysis is compelling and suggests that the first AfD was wrongly decided. Prioryman (talk) 22:26, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Comment If we decide to relist, could we unclose the second nomination instead of unclosing the first one? If we say that the first one was wrongly closed but that it needs more input, it would seem to me to be better to throw everything out and allow the start-from-the-ground-up that the second one provides. Nyttend (talk) 22:33, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] That seems very sensible to me. Prioryman (talk) 22:35, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] (copied from the second AFD, which was closed just as I was posting this) Keep (i.e., Endorse first AfD result). First of all, I question the value of renominating this or any article for deletion just four days after a prior AFD closed as Keep, in the absence of a supervening BLP issue or the like. (The DRV, while perhaps procedurally better, is its own timesink.) In any event, Wikipediocracy has become sufficiently notable to warrant an article here based on some of the sources that have been cited in the AFD. At this point, the site is at least as notable as its now-moribund predecessor Wikipedia Review, which has enjoyed (?) an article for several years. And although we don't rely on future events as the basis for notability, the notability of Wikipediocracy is almost sure to continue to increase: Wikipedia and Wikimedia, for all of their positive attributes that keep us contributing, will continue to have faults and foibles that Wikipediocracy will seek to expose and publicize, sometimes fairly and sometimes otherwise. If we delete this now, we'll be having an agonizing debate again about whether enough has changed to warrant inclusion some three or six months from now; let's not do that to ourselves. For what it's worth, I do not believe this article should be mainpaged—in general, including articles that the general public would perceive as navel-gazing on the main page should be avoided—but that is a different question from whether the article should exist at all. Finally, I hope that the community will devote only a reasonably proportionate amount of time to this entire discussion, recognizing that while this AFD/DRV may matter very much to our "inside baseball" crowd, the short-term fate of this article is of limited importance in the grander scheme of wikithings. In the past few days, a lot of Wikipedians (myself included) have looked back at the damage done by Qworty and asked "why wasn't this problem identified much sooner?" Part of the answer is that sometimes we collectively focus too much of the community's most precious resource, which is our contributors' time and attention, not on improving our articles and making sure that we treat our fellow editors and our article subjects fairly, but on digressions like this one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC) I haven't looked at Wikipedia Review's sources, so I can't comment on whether they are adequate. However, comparing this article to another one seems nonsensical when we're talking about completely different sources. Can you please directly address the issues with the sources that I pointed out and how they generally have a sentence or less (a few not even that) about Wikipediocracy? How exactly does this work with our notability policies? Because if something this thin can be considered notable, then there are a huge number of other articles that have no reason to be deleted, even if they have thin references like this does. Silver seren^C 22:42, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Perhaps what makes this one different is that it's backed by a community who know how to troll and disrupt Wikipedia to get their own way. I can't help feeling that the article was created specifically to set editors at each others' throats. Prioryman (talk) 22:46, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] I think that is unfair, Prioryman. There does seem a legitimate belief among Wikipediocrats that several trivial mentions = significant coverage, but that is also a misunderstanding that other editors hold as well. I think the desire to create the article was legitimate and honest. It is, in my obvious opinion, also premature. Reso lute 22:51, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] They knew, quite obviously, that creating the article was likely to cause controversy. Submitting it to DYK - a project they hold in contempt, by the way - was an even more drama-laden act. Everything about the way this was done suggests to me that they wanted to make the biggest splash they could. In that, sadly, they seem to have succeeded. Prioryman (talk) 23:04, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] I do not intend to offer an opinion as to the DRV itself, but your personal attacks here, Prioryman, are quite out of line, especially considering your own considerable COI in the matter. Mangoe (talk) 00:34, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse first AfD result. Per NYB. Darkness Shines (talk) 22:40, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse first AfD result. Honestly, the second AfD was heading to the exact same result in spite of Seren's arguments. Time to stop the procedural nonsense and face facts: the article is staying.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:46, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Re-open second debate. The first AFD was done over a weekend when many editors would not have been aware, and was quickly propped up by Wikipediocrats defending their turf. That said, there were also several keep !votes from editors uninvolved with the site and on that basis, I cannot fault JayJay's decision to close the first one. However, the second AFD is based on a legitimate concern that was glossed over in the first AFD: the article subject simply has not been the subject of significant coverage from independent reliable sources. It does not pass WP:GNG. The site has earned a few mentions as part of articles dedicated to the topic of criticism of Wikipedia, but Wikipediocracy has not yet itself been the subject of such coverage. There is an evident desire to argue notability on the basis of numerous trivial mentions, but that is not supported by the notability guidelines. Moreover, accepting this argument basically renders any politician/candidate or athlete notable if they are given several trivial mentions in articles about elections or games. This is the extent to which GNG is being misapplied. And while that is more of an AFD argument than a DRV one, the simplest course of action would be to simply let the second AFD run its course. Becuase of the nature of Wikipediocracy and several of its users, this article had no hope but to become a drama magnet. The best way to deal with it is to just let the AfD run its course then allow an admin knowledgeable about policy to judge consensus. These silly venue shifting games don't help. Reso lute 22:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Determining whether coverage is "trivial" is not about counting how many times something is mentioned or seeing if it is discussed in its own right, but whether the context of the mention indicates it is an important subject. As far as your comparison to articles about politicians in elections and athletes in games, that kind of coverage would be excluded by WP:ROUTINE. None of the mentions of WO that we are talking about are routine.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:00, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] I would say it is. The articles are about Wikipedia and percieved or real abuses within. Wikipediocracy gets a momentary mention in some cases, simply as a hat tip, but it is undeniably not the subject of any of the sources any more than the examples I gave above. Reso lute 23:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Comment I'll leave the notability issue for others to debate... it's probably not notable enough for an encyclopedia in my view of what notable would mean, but where I think the bar should be is much higher than it actually is. FWIW, as a participant on Wikipediocracy, my preference would be delete (as well as maybe have this debate on one page rather than 3). --SB_Johnny \| ^talk✌ 22:50, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse - Sorry ladies & gents & others, but as my dream girl once said, "it's all over but the crying". 1 snow keep + 1 bad-faith quick renomination that we all know would've wound up a keep as well == an article that is going to stick around. All we're here to do at DRV is evaluate the closing admin's actions. No fault can be found here at all. Tarc (talk) 22:59, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse first AfD result per (wikipediocracy member) NewYorkBrad.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 23:02, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Reopen second AfD The first AfD was closed after 24 hours or so, the second lasted less than that. The first was closed with SNOW, but the second isn't snowing, so why not continue it so we have an actual full length AfD? IRWolfie- (talk) 23:13, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse I can't see anything procedurally wrong with the way that either AFD nomination was closed, the request to overturn seems to amount to "I disagree with the way people voted" rather than "I think the nomination was closed against procedure". DRV is not itself "AFD Part II" (or in this case Part III), rather we're supposed to look at the deletion process rather than the merits of the deletion argument itself. I don't see where the process was flawed in any way. This does not preclude a new AFD after sufficient time (say 6 months or so) to test the waters to see if consensus has changed, but as a matter of this AFD, I don't see where there's any evidence this needs to be overturned. --Jayron32 23:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] If no new sources of sufficient coverage exist by then, that is probably a good idea. Silver seren^C 05:17, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse first AfD result per my comments at the 2nd AfD. - Mr X 23:57, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] This is going to be an "endorse" by sheer weight of numbers, even if we disregard all the AfD round 2 comments above, but it shouldn't be. We should let SilverSeren have his 7 days at AfD, after which the material will of course be kept, but we're not here to decide that. DRV's function is to see that the process is correctly followed, and the process is that discussions are left open for 7 days. There's no urgent or pressing reason to come to a decision earlier, is there? It's against all reason and logic to endorse a "procedural close" of this kind. There is nothing procedural about closing discussions early. Any kind of snow close is an IAR close, and it's inherently bold, and can be reverted per BRD. People snow close discussions like this in an attempt to bring the drama to an end, but of course it doesn't bring the drama to an end. It just brings it here. The correct decision here is to let editors have their say in the normal way. Relist for the whole seven days.—S Marshall T/C 00:00, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse per my comments at the second afd. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 00:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Comment - I think there is a rational IAR basis for keeping a piece of borderline notability here. As I commented at the first AfD if this closes a Delete, chances are there will be a redirect to Wikipedia Review (predecessor website) either coming out of the AfD process or established by editorial decision shortly thereafter. That will cause the other piece to grow an unseemly appendage for a time, before another hard source or two inevitably appears and the Wikipediocracy piece splits off again. I think there is a case to be made that it is a more rational way to build an encyclopedia to not attempt to bury a borderline piece at this juncture; we know with mathematical certainty that it will expand over time. I think the snow keep last time was reasonable. I'm a regular poster on the WPO message board so I will just leave this as a comment rather than as a bolded opinion, but hopefully the closing administrator will see the logic of my perspective. Carrite (talk) 01:20, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse per User:Jayron32. Begoon ^talk 01:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Comment I'd prefer delete but understand the concerns of NYB. It's already larger than the articles on entities that establish its notability. This article has thevery possibility of simply being a collection of past drama. and a Coatrack for any perceived slight or wrongdoing. The article needs serious trimming to limit the scope to what Wikipediocracy is rather than what it contains. --DHeyward (talk) 08:04, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse. The next appropriate forum at which to shop would be St. Jude's. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:15, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Sorry but your comment does not seem to have any relevance to the discussion. Are you alleging that Silver Seren is somehow forum shopping because he started a second AfD? IRWolfie- (talk) 10:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] It should be nice to use this discussion in future AfDs though, to show that linking to a website and one sentence mentions establish notability. I'm pretty sure I can get almost everything to be kept by using that. Silver seren^C 16:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] I think you'll find that this is a sui generis AfD, because the normal rules are apparently suspended where Wikipediocracy and its members are concerned. Prioryman (talk) 17:18, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Overturn...Allow the Afd to run the full week. This will allow the proper vetting of the sources and full discussion.--MONGO 17:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Re-open second debate. The close on the first AfD was per WP:SNOW. Read that page: "If an issue is 'snowballed', and somebody later raises a reasonable objection, then it probably was not a good candidate for the snowball clause." User:Nyttend didn't read that, or doesn't agree and prefers a selective (and expansive) interpretation of WP:SNOW, or thinks that the second nomination is not a "reasonable objection". Any of these are Very Bad Mojo and no props to User:Nyttend in this particular instance. The community was given about one day to work through this, which is not enough time to see how things might develop. User:JayJay SNOWing this was also not a good close. I might remind User:JayJay that Roosevelt's speech on December 8 1941 did not read "We surrender per WP:SNOW". Sometimes things take a little time to work out. We're not on deadline here. For goodness sakes, WP:SNOW is just an essay anyway, and if proposed as a guideline I wouldn't vote for it nor would many others -- I'm a Wikipedia:Process is important guy, and pretending that the essay WP:SNOW supercedes policies is depressingly mediocre thinking in my view. WP:SNOW is fine in certain narrow non-controversial situations. Let's keep it there. WP:SNOW is intended to make things go faster and avoid wasted effort. Just the opposite effect was achieved here. Looking on the bright side, at least User:JayJay and User:Nyttend have learned a valuable lesson which'll help them be better editors in future. No hard feelings guys, no permanent harm. N.B: the person closing the re-opened 2nd nomination should take into account comments from the first one, though. Herostratus (talk) 17:47, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Yes, I learned that it's definitely important to discuss things at the right place and to help people follow process (especially when discussing and helping are agreed at an outside forum, which my decision was), because disrupting things needless does result in permanent harm. Opening a second AFD almost immediately after the first one closes as keep is never a good idea; it's virtually always forum shopping, and the exceptions (like this one) are those that bring up things that belong somewhere other than AFD. I didn't pay attention to SNOW here because it was completely irrelevant; your statement could with equal validity say that I didn't read or I prefer a selective and expansive interpretation of WP:PROFESSOR, because both are 100% unrelated. Nyttend (talk) 18:13, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] I see where you're coming from. If I understand correctly, you're saying the 2nd nominator should have gone to DRV instead of a 2nd AfD. Yes I guess so, but he didn't, and I think you should have noted the closing reason and been a little flexible. There's no need to be pedantic about these things. We pay you to think a little bit about these things, not just respond mechanistically. We could write a bot to automatically close AfDs that are opened N days after a Keep close, even if the close reason was "Non-admin close as Keep after one day, because I happen to like the article" (which this close was pretty close to) or whatever. I'd rather not operate like that. Herostratus (talk) 05:06, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] 'Comment' The basis for SNOW is the policy that WP is not a bureaucracy, and if a result is inevitable, there's no point delaying getting to it. SNOW is an explanation of one frequently occurring instance. Herostratus, I think you are simultaneous arguing that SNOW is just an essay and of no binding force & that the closer did not follow the letter of it--those two arguments are incompatible. I personally would not have SNOWed this, because what was really inevitable is that it would come here. The rules do in fact get suspended when there is something we don't like, that directly affects us. We do what most PR firms try to do for their clients, pretend what we do not like isn't really there, or isn't really important. DGG ( talk ) 18:01, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] I agree that if a result is inevitable SNOW is fine. But "inevitable" should be defined narrowly, else we end up here, with MORE extra work to do. The original SNOW closer made an understandable mistake. We know that now, cos we're here. And I don't think my points are incompatible -- it's just an essay, but if one is going to invoke it, at least stick to the spirit of what it says it's for. I urge all and sundry to define SNOW narrowly for purely practical reasons, and to treat SNOW much like PROD in that any reasonable objection overrules it, for organizational health reasons. Look at the comment directly below. It's not logical. But we're getting that a lot: "It was closed as a SNOW, end of story". That's not was SNOW is supposed to be about, at all. A lot of slopes aren't slippery, but WP:SNOW is one that is. It's always threatening to slide from "Close as WP:SNOW, because only one outcome is now possible" to "Close as WP:SNOW, quick, before the other side has a chance to mobilize". It's a very dangerous essay and should be used with much caution. Herostratus (talk) 21:58, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Hunh. After seeing what Nyttend wrote, I get it. The user should have gone to DRV instead of opening a 2nd AfD. If I'm reading him right, this would be required even if the close had been "Non-admin close as Keep after one day, because I happen to like the article" (or even "Non-admin close as Keep after one day, because Martian insects are trying to sell my washing machine", I guess) because that's the rule, period. That does seem pretty pedantic to me, speaking of not being rule-bound. Herostratus (talk) 05:06, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] If I were rule-bound, I would have closed it without doing anything, rather than sending it over to here where it belongs and giving it a proper discussion. I did this to help, not to attract attacks from you for doing what was in line with consensus. Nyttend (talk) 06:12, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse WP:SNOW may be listed as an essay but it is buttressed with policy. Unscintillating (talk) 21:36, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Endorse As per DGG - WP is not a bureaucracy. The SNOW keep was obvious at the first AFD. Next step would be DRV. The second (aborted) out of process AFD was also well on the way to 'Keep'. At this point per 'not a bureaucracy' how about we put this waste of time of everyone's time to bed for a while. (Maybe a bit longer than 4 days this time.) Situations like this are why 'not a bureaucracy' exists. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:53, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] And yet the second AfD happened and it wasn't snowing. How is WP:SNOW still applicable? IRWolfie- (talk) 11:13, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply] Overturn and Delete, preferably, Overturn and reopen AfD otherwise. WP:SNOW is irrelevant when 90-95% of Keep voters didn't make any policy-based argument whatsoever - and the majority of that figure made arguments that violated WP:CRYSTAL (ie, this will be notable soon, so we should keep it) or made comments that deleting it appears like censorship (which is utterly irrelevant). Beyond that, WP:SNOW is for uncontroversial things. How on earth was this ever going to be a non-controversial close? Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 11:39, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.

Wikipediocracy – Oh dear! What a mess. The point that everyone seems to have missed is that the original SNOW close was an NAC and therefore, almost by definition against process as SNOW is almost always inappropriate for an NAC - especially for an article as controversial as this. Further, the snow close truncated debate on the sourcing that one of the participants subsequently analysed in more detail and felt lacking. This is part of the reason why a SNOW close of anything the slightest bit controversial is an incredibly foolish idea (and yes I have done my own share of foolish SNOW closes). As such, those arguing for a relist are the ones putting forward a view that is supported by both policy and long standing practice at DRV. The sourcing is in-play, requires discussion, and DRV is not the forum to consider it. To move things forward, I'm truncating the DRV and immediately relisting AFD 2 as this is for sure how I would have been closing this DRV in however many days hence of pointless argument I will be saving by closing it now. For future, SS should have DRVed the original SNOW and I or another regular DRV admin would have reopened the discussion per WP:NAC at the time and saved this whole stupid mess. Having opened AFD 2 the optimal outcome would have been to leave it be but I wouldn't blame Nyttend as they are not a regular here and wouldn't have known how this would have been bound to play out. – Spartaz ^Humbug! 14:17, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.

After this AFD resulted in a decision of "keep", someone decided to challenge the decision by opening a new AFD, rather than by coming here. I've closed the AFD procedurally in favor of coming here. The nominator's rationale is as follows.

I have no opinion on the matter, so I'm neutral. Nyttend (talk) 22:12, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I completely realize that this article was recently taken to AfD. Heck, I realize that I voted Keep in that AfD. However, after comments by others about the sources, i've taken a closer look at them, which I didn't really do previously. And what I have found does seem to indicate a violation of WP:SIGCOV here, where the source coverage is extremely trivial. While this was occasionally mentioned in the previous AfD, it does not appear to have been properly represented and that is why I am opening this new discussion. I will now go through the sources in the article to show what I mean.

This source is used to reference the Bicholim conflict hoax material, of which on Wikipediocracy it states, "Users of the Wikipediocracy forum have pinned down a likely suspect, however, a Wikipedian who went by the handle "A-b-a-a-a-a-a-a-b-a."" That is the entirety of the mention of Wikipediocracy within the article, clearly trivial.

This is a recent source about the Qworty incident. on Wikipediocracy, it states, "The Qworty fiasco came to Leonard’s attention, he writes, when members of Wikipediocracy, a site that details instances of Wikipedian fakery and bias, contacted him." Also a trivial mention, not even counting that it is referencing information from a different news article.

This article could actually be an issue of original research being used in the Wikipediocracy article. At the bottom of it, it states "H/T Wikipediocracy", with that being a link to a tweet by the Wikipediocracy Twitter that itself just links to two diff changes in a Wikipedia article. H/T generally means "Heard through" on Twitter, but that is certainly not enough information to back up the sentence currently in the Wikipediocracy article that it is attached to. This isn't even a real mention of the site at all.

This article is about somewhat recent discussions with Jimbo about Kazakh Wikipedia. Its comments on Wikipediocracy amount to, "Wales was responding from comments by Andreas Kolbe, a moderator at Wikipediocracy, an external forum whose members are often harshly critical of Wikimedia's management." This is, again, a trivial mention, and really, from what the rest of the article says, is a better reference to be used on Andreas than Wikipediocracy.

This source is about Gibraltarpedia. About Wikipediocracy, it states, "Kolbe wrote on Wikipediocracy, a site often critical of Wikimedia’s top brass." Again, this article has a fair amount to say on Andreas, but only half a sentence on Wikipediocracy. Even more trivial than trivial.

This source I could go on about its reliability, with it being The Register and about its author, Andrew Orlowski, but I have no need to. Because this article makes absolutely no mention of Wikipediocracy at all (other than in a screenshot of a Wikipedia conversation). Honestly, I have no idea why this source is in the article, other than for POV pushing.

This source, likewise, has no mention of Wikipediocracy and is merely being used to source the statement "co-founder of Wikipedia" for Larry Sanger, which doesn't really seem necessary, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. This source, like the previous, confers no notability to Wikipediocracy, not even through a trivial mention.

Now i'll go back to the source that I skipped and saved for last here, because it is the one we have to focus on, that offers slightly more to the subject. However, it is about the recent Qworty incident and is the only source of any real length on Wikipediocracy, so we also have to bring up the question on whether this single event adds much by itself.

The article that I am referring to is this one. Now you can read it yourself and it certainly has a lot of references to Wikipediocracy and the information the writer was given by members there. However, it also says pretty much nothing about the site itself. Really, other than the mentions of their involvement in giving this Wikipedia information to the author, the article has nothing to say about the Wikipediocracy site itself.

And that's it, in a fair bit of length. If there was a single source that discussed the site in any length, even a paragraph, then this might be a different discussion. If there was anything about the site's foundings, its origins, even more about its members. But there's nothing. There are references to the site and that's all.

And as is often noted in AfD discussions, a bunch of trivial mentions don't add up to much. Trivial mentions are still trivial. And, in most cases, these are even worse than trivial. Usually what we call "trivial mentions" have at least two sentences or something on a subject, but these are, apparently, the most trivial among the trivial.

I see no real argument for notability here, once you actually take a look at the sources. Silver seren^C 04:02, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn and relist Due to the potential for !voters with a conflict of interest, the AfD should have been left open longer. AutomaticStrikeout ? 22:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please describe this conflict of interest ? Is it not the case that every editor has an inherent conflict of interest in a topic like Wikipediocracy, given its symbiotic relationship with Wikimedia/Wikipedia. Nick (talk) 22:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Giving the AfD more time gives all points of view a greater opportunity to weigh in. AutomaticStrikeout ? 23:25, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn and delete (first preference) or relist (second preference). I'm not sure about the wisdom of not letting the new AfD play out, but here we are, anyway. Silver seren is right to point out the degree of WP:COATRACKing and puffery in this article. Virtually everything in it depends on trivial passing mentions. User:Steve has done a useful exercise to strip out anything from the article that isn't a trivial passing mention - see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Steve/Sandbox&oldid=556316884 . Without puffery, the article reduces to four sentences which are mostly about the recent Qworty issue which, other than the linked Salon story, seems to have failed to arouse any significant commentary that I've seen in reliable sources. As others have said, it's hard to argue for significant notability based on one single news article. In the most recent AfD, some editors have argued that a single news article can convey significant notability but that simply isn't compliant with policy. Others have argued in this and the previous AfD that the article should be kept because the subject might be more notable in future, but again that's not compliant with policy (WP:CRYSTAL etc). Silver and Steve's analysis is compelling and suggests that the first AfD was wrongly decided. Prioryman (talk) 22:26, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment If we decide to relist, could we unclose the second nomination instead of unclosing the first one? If we say that the first one was wrongly closed but that it needs more input, it would seem to me to be better to throw everything out and allow the start-from-the-ground-up that the second one provides. Nyttend (talk) 22:33, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That seems very sensible to me. Prioryman (talk) 22:35, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(copied from the second AFD, which was closed just as I was posting this) Keep (i.e., Endorse first AfD result). First of all, I question the value of renominating this or any article for deletion just four days after a prior AFD closed as Keep, in the absence of a supervening BLP issue or the like. (The DRV, while perhaps procedurally better, is its own timesink.) In any event, Wikipediocracy has become sufficiently notable to warrant an article here based on some of the sources that have been cited in the AFD. At this point, the site is at least as notable as its now-moribund predecessor Wikipedia Review, which has enjoyed (?) an article for several years. And although we don't rely on future events as the basis for notability, the notability of Wikipediocracy is almost sure to continue to increase: Wikipedia and Wikimedia, for all of their positive attributes that keep us contributing, will continue to have faults and foibles that Wikipediocracy will seek to expose and publicize, sometimes fairly and sometimes otherwise. If we delete this now, we'll be having an agonizing debate again about whether enough has changed to warrant inclusion some three or six months from now; let's not do that to ourselves. For what it's worth, I do not believe this article should be mainpaged—in general, including articles that the general public would perceive as navel-gazing on the main page should be avoided—but that is a different question from whether the article should exist at all. Finally, I hope that the community will devote only a reasonably proportionate amount of time to this entire discussion, recognizing that while this AFD/DRV may matter very much to our "inside baseball" crowd, the short-term fate of this article is of limited importance in the grander scheme of wikithings. In the past few days, a lot of Wikipedians (myself included) have looked back at the damage done by Qworty and asked "why wasn't this problem identified much sooner?" Part of the answer is that sometimes we collectively focus too much of the community's most precious resource, which is our contributors' time and attention, not on improving our articles and making sure that we treat our fellow editors and our article subjects fairly, but on digressions like this one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I haven't looked at Wikipedia Review's sources, so I can't comment on whether they are adequate. However, comparing this article to another one seems nonsensical when we're talking about completely different sources. Can you please directly address the issues with the sources that I pointed out and how they generally have a sentence or less (a few not even that) about Wikipediocracy? How exactly does this work with our notability policies? Because if something this thin can be considered notable, then there are a huge number of other articles that have no reason to be deleted, even if they have thin references like this does. Silver seren^C 22:42, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps what makes this one different is that it's backed by a community who know how to troll and disrupt Wikipedia to get their own way. I can't help feeling that the article was created specifically to set editors at each others' throats. Prioryman (talk) 22:46, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is unfair, Prioryman. There does seem a legitimate belief among Wikipediocrats that several trivial mentions = significant coverage, but that is also a misunderstanding that other editors hold as well. I think the desire to create the article was legitimate and honest. It is, in my obvious opinion, also premature. Reso lute 22:51, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They knew, quite obviously, that creating the article was likely to cause controversy. Submitting it to DYK - a project they hold in contempt, by the way - was an even more drama-laden act. Everything about the way this was done suggests to me that they wanted to make the biggest splash they could. In that, sadly, they seem to have succeeded. Prioryman (talk) 23:04, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do not intend to offer an opinion as to the DRV itself, but your personal attacks here, Prioryman, are quite out of line, especially considering your own considerable COI in the matter. Mangoe (talk) 00:34, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse first AfD result. Per NYB. Darkness Shines (talk) 22:40, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse first AfD result. Honestly, the second AfD was heading to the exact same result in spite of Seren's arguments. Time to stop the procedural nonsense and face facts: the article is staying.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:46, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Re-open second debate. The first AFD was done over a weekend when many editors would not have been aware, and was quickly propped up by Wikipediocrats defending their turf. That said, there were also several keep !votes from editors uninvolved with the site and on that basis, I cannot fault JayJay's decision to close the first one. However, the second AFD is based on a legitimate concern that was glossed over in the first AFD: the article subject simply has not been the subject of significant coverage from independent reliable sources. It does not pass WP:GNG. The site has earned a few mentions as part of articles dedicated to the topic of criticism of Wikipedia, but Wikipediocracy has not yet itself been the subject of such coverage. There is an evident desire to argue notability on the basis of numerous trivial mentions, but that is not supported by the notability guidelines. Moreover, accepting this argument basically renders any politician/candidate or athlete notable if they are given several trivial mentions in articles about elections or games. This is the extent to which GNG is being misapplied. And while that is more of an AFD argument than a DRV one, the simplest course of action would be to simply let the second AFD run its course. Becuase of the nature of Wikipediocracy and several of its users, this article had no hope but to become a drama magnet. The best way to deal with it is to just let the AfD run its course then allow an admin knowledgeable about policy to judge consensus. These silly venue shifting games don't help. Reso lute 22:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Determining whether coverage is "trivial" is not about counting how many times something is mentioned or seeing if it is discussed in its own right, but whether the context of the mention indicates it is an important subject. As far as your comparison to articles about politicians in elections and athletes in games, that kind of coverage would be excluded by WP:ROUTINE. None of the mentions of WO that we are talking about are routine.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:00, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would say it is. The articles are about Wikipedia and percieved or real abuses within. Wikipediocracy gets a momentary mention in some cases, simply as a hat tip, but it is undeniably not the subject of any of the sources any more than the examples I gave above. Reso lute 23:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'll leave the notability issue for others to debate... it's probably not notable enough for an encyclopedia in my view of what notable would mean, but where I think the bar should be is much higher than it actually is.
FWIW, as a participant on Wikipediocracy, my preference would be delete (as well as maybe have this debate on one page rather than 3). --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 22:50, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse - Sorry ladies & gents & others, but as my dream girl once said, "it's all over but the crying". 1 snow keep + 1 bad-faith quick renomination that we all know would've wound up a keep as well == an article that is going to stick around. All we're here to do at DRV is evaluate the closing admin's actions. No fault can be found here at all. Tarc (talk) 22:59, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse first AfD result per (wikipediocracy member) NewYorkBrad.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 23:02, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reopen second AfD The first AfD was closed after 24 hours or so, the second lasted less than that. The first was closed with SNOW, but the second isn't snowing, so why not continue it so we have an actual full length AfD? IRWolfie- (talk) 23:13, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse I can't see anything procedurally wrong with the way that either AFD nomination was closed, the request to overturn seems to amount to "I disagree with the way people voted" rather than "I think the nomination was closed against procedure". DRV is not itself "AFD Part II" (or in this case Part III), rather we're supposed to look at the deletion process rather than the merits of the deletion argument itself. I don't see where the process was flawed in any way. This does not preclude a new AFD after sufficient time (say 6 months or so) to test the waters to see if consensus has changed, but as a matter of this AFD, I don't see where there's any evidence this needs to be overturned. --Jayron32 23:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If no new sources of sufficient coverage exist by then, that is probably a good idea. Silver seren^C 05:17, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse first AfD result per my comments at the 2nd AfD. - Mr X 23:57, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is going to be an "endorse" by sheer weight of numbers, even if we disregard all the AfD round 2 comments above, but it shouldn't be. We should let SilverSeren have his 7 days at AfD, after which the material will of course be kept, but we're not here to decide that. DRV's function is to see that the process is correctly followed, and the process is that discussions are left open for 7 days. There's no urgent or pressing reason to come to a decision earlier, is there?
It's against all reason and logic to endorse a "procedural close" of this kind. There is nothing procedural about closing discussions early. Any kind of snow close is an IAR close, and it's inherently bold, and can be reverted per BRD. People snow close discussions like this in an attempt to bring the drama to an end, but of course it doesn't bring the drama to an end. It just brings it here. The correct decision here is to let editors have their say in the normal way. Relist for the whole seven days.—S Marshall T/C 00:00, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse per my comments at the second afd. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 00:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I think there is a rational IAR basis for keeping a piece of borderline notability here. As I commented at the first AfD if this closes a Delete, chances are there will be a redirect to Wikipedia Review (predecessor website) either coming out of the AfD process or established by editorial decision shortly thereafter. That will cause the other piece to grow an unseemly appendage for a time, before another hard source or two inevitably appears and the Wikipediocracy piece splits off again. I think there is a case to be made that it is a more rational way to build an encyclopedia to not attempt to bury a borderline piece at this juncture; we know with mathematical certainty that it will expand over time. I think the snow keep last time was reasonable. I'm a regular poster on the WPO message board so I will just leave this as a comment rather than as a bolded opinion, but hopefully the closing administrator will see the logic of my perspective. Carrite (talk) 01:20, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse per User:Jayron32. Begoon ^talk 01:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'd prefer delete but understand the concerns of NYB. It's already larger than the articles on entities that establish its notability. This article has thevery possibility of simply being a collection of past drama. and a Coatrack for any perceived slight or wrongdoing. The article needs serious trimming to limit the scope to what Wikipediocracy is rather than what it contains. --DHeyward (talk) 08:04, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse. The next appropriate forum at which to shop would be St. Jude's. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:15, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but your comment does not seem to have any relevance to the discussion. Are you alleging that Silver Seren is somehow forum shopping because he started a second AfD? IRWolfie- (talk) 10:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It should be nice to use this discussion in future AfDs though, to show that linking to a website and one sentence mentions establish notability. I'm pretty sure I can get almost everything to be kept by using that. Silver seren^C 16:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll find that this is a sui generis AfD, because the normal rules are apparently suspended where Wikipediocracy and its members are concerned. Prioryman (talk) 17:18, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn...Allow the Afd to run the full week. This will allow the proper vetting of the sources and full discussion.--MONGO 17:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Re-open second debate. The close on the first AfD was per WP:SNOW. Read that page: "If an issue is 'snowballed', and somebody later raises a reasonable objection, then it probably was not a good candidate for the snowball clause." User:Nyttend didn't read that, or doesn't agree and prefers a selective (and expansive) interpretation of WP:SNOW, or thinks that the second nomination is not a "reasonable objection". Any of these are Very Bad Mojo and no props to User:Nyttend in this particular instance. The community was given about one day to work through this, which is not enough time to see how things might develop. User:JayJay SNOWing this was also not a good close. I might remind User:JayJay that Roosevelt's speech on December 8 1941 did not read "We surrender per WP:SNOW". Sometimes things take a little time to work out. We're not on deadline here.

For goodness sakes, WP:SNOW is just an essay anyway, and if proposed as a guideline I wouldn't vote for it nor would many others -- I'm a Wikipedia:Process is important guy, and pretending that the essay WP:SNOW supercedes policies is depressingly mediocre thinking in my view. WP:SNOW is fine in certain narrow non-controversial situations. Let's keep it there. WP:SNOW is intended to make things go faster and avoid wasted effort. Just the opposite effect was achieved here. Looking on the bright side, at least User:JayJay and User:Nyttend have learned a valuable lesson which'll help them be better editors in future. No hard feelings guys, no permanent harm.

N.B: the person closing the re-opened 2nd nomination should take into account comments from the first one, though. Herostratus (talk) 17:47, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

- Yes, I learned that it's definitely important to discuss things at the right place and to help people follow process (especially when discussing and helping are agreed at an outside forum, which my decision was), because disrupting things needless does result in permanent harm. Opening a second AFD almost immediately after the first one closes as keep is never a good idea; it's virtually always forum shopping, and the exceptions (like this one) are those that bring up things that belong somewhere other than AFD. I didn't pay attention to SNOW here because it was completely irrelevant; your statement could with equal validity say that I didn't read or I prefer a selective and expansive interpretation of WP:PROFESSOR, because both are 100% unrelated. Nyttend (talk) 18:13, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - I see where you're coming from. If I understand correctly, you're saying the 2nd nominator should have gone to DRV instead of a 2nd AfD. Yes I guess so, but he didn't, and I think you should have noted the closing reason and been a little flexible. There's no need to be pedantic about these things. We pay you to think a little bit about these things, not just respond mechanistically. We could write a bot to automatically close AfDs that are opened N days after a Keep close, even if the close reason was "Non-admin close as Keep after one day, because I happen to like the article" (which this close was pretty close to) or whatever. I'd rather not operate like that. Herostratus (talk) 05:06, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
'Comment' The basis for SNOW is the policy that WP is not a bureaucracy, and if a result is inevitable, there's no point delaying getting to it. SNOW is an explanation of one frequently occurring instance. Herostratus, I think you are simultaneous arguing that SNOW is just an essay and of no binding force & that the closer did not follow the letter of it--those two arguments are incompatible. I personally would not have SNOWed this, because what was really inevitable is that it would come here. The rules do in fact get suspended when there is something we don't like, that directly affects us. We do what most PR firms try to do for their clients, pretend what we do not like isn't really there, or isn't really important. DGG ( talk ) 18:01, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree that if a result is inevitable SNOW is fine. But "inevitable" should be defined narrowly, else we end up here, with MORE extra work to do. The original SNOW closer made an understandable mistake. We know that now, cos we're here. And I don't think my points are incompatible -- it's just an essay, but if one is going to invoke it, at least stick to the spirit of what it says it's for. I urge all and sundry to define SNOW narrowly for purely practical reasons, and to treat SNOW much like PROD in that any reasonable objection overrules it, for organizational health reasons.

Look at the comment directly below. It's not logical. But we're getting that a lot: "It was closed as a SNOW, end of story". That's not was SNOW is supposed to be about, at all. A lot of slopes aren't slippery, but WP:SNOW is one that is. It's always threatening to slide from "Close as WP:SNOW, because only one outcome is now possible" to "Close as WP:SNOW, quick, before the other side has a chance to mobilize". It's a very dangerous essay and should be used with much caution. Herostratus (talk) 21:58, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hunh. After seeing what Nyttend wrote, I get it. The user should have gone to DRV instead of opening a 2nd AfD. If I'm reading him right, this would be required even if the close had been "Non-admin close as Keep after one day, because I happen to like the article" (or even "Non-admin close as Keep after one day, because Martian insects are trying to sell my washing machine", I guess) because that's the rule, period. That does seem pretty pedantic to me, speaking of not being rule-bound. Herostratus (talk) 05:06, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If I were rule-bound, I would have closed it without doing anything, rather than sending it over to here where it belongs and giving it a proper discussion. I did this to help, not to attract attacks from you for doing what was in line with consensus. Nyttend (talk) 06:12, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse WP:SNOW may be listed as an essay but it is buttressed with policy. Unscintillating (talk) 21:36, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse As per DGG - WP is not a bureaucracy. The SNOW keep was obvious at the first AFD. Next step would be DRV. The second (aborted) out of process AFD was also well on the way to 'Keep'. At this point per 'not a bureaucracy' how about we put this waste of time of everyone's time to bed for a while. (Maybe a bit longer than 4 days this time.) Situations like this are why 'not a bureaucracy' exists. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:53, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And yet the second AfD happened and it wasn't snowing. How is WP:SNOW still applicable? IRWolfie- (talk) 11:13, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn and Delete, preferably, Overturn and reopen AfD otherwise. WP:SNOW is irrelevant when 90-95% of Keep voters didn't make any policy-based argument whatsoever - and the majority of that figure made arguments that violated WP:CRYSTAL (ie, this will be notable soon, so we should keep it) or made comments that deleting it appears like censorship (which is utterly irrelevant). Beyond that, WP:SNOW is for uncontroversial things. How on earth was this ever going to be a non-controversial close? Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 11:39, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.