English Wikipedia @ Freddythechick:Articles for deletion/Nifty Archive

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, problems raised in the nom are not solved. An as yet unpublished source is of no help at the moment. Fram (talk) 13:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Nifty Archive

There is no indication of notability and no verifiability at all, lacking even appropriate ownership information for any encyclopedic value, using only the website's own self-published claims. JGHowes ^talk 05:24, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep. It's not a great article, to be sure. However, Alexa corroborates the claims regarding the age of the site (it predates the widespread public adoption of the Internet in 1995) and shows that it is at least moderately popular. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 05:38, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. -- TexasAndroid (talk) 06:57, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Better to improve the article than to delete altogether.Bills16309 (talk) 13:16, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep. This is an extremely well known site. I am neither gay nor do I read erotica online yet I've seen nifty.org referenced in many places. 174.146.255.243 (talk) 18:07, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

What are the "many places" where it's referenced? Are they reliable sources? Usually, the lack of any mention in reliable secondary sources is indicative of lack of notability. In what way does this article comply with WP:V? JGHowes ^talk 19:05, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nom, could not find any reliable, independent 3rd party sources discussing the website? Zzzzz (talk) 23:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep It's very difficult to find sourced information about many erotic sites since there's so much spam clogging up the search engines, but an Alexa rank of <10,000 indicates reasonable popularity, and that site has been around since the very early days of the internet. Like the previous IP address that commented, I don't read gay erotica online but I've seen this site referenced before, but don't ask me to look anything up given the ridiculous volumes of spam on the internet regarding any sexual topic. 70.4.243.55 (talk) 08:01, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Keep The archieve earns it's place in any encyclopedia on the internet that includes articles about the internet itself (as Wiki does). The project is notable for serveral reasons, such as:

age, Nifty was online many years before the net became popular
unlike most porn sites this project is a not-for-ptofit organisation
as far as I know this project is unique: a porn site accepted as US charity by the US IRS.
the problems mentioned in the article about the non-acceptance of this site shows -imho- the lack of acceptance of gay sex.

IMHO I'm convinced that this article would never be proposed for Speedy Removal if the content of the site was about straight sex. This shows (again) that gay sex is far from accepted. What's the need for speedy removal?? The article only metions facts, it doesn't advertise or praise the site and tries to include references/sources, although it is indeed quite hard to find facts on other sites regarding Nifty. Reasons for this can be: people hardly discuss matters that are taken for granted because the product has always been there (Nifty is longer online then most people using the net), (2): the archieve is not a cummunity platform or chatforum, it is just an archieve or collection of stories, (3) the site doesn't annoy people by sending spam or advertise on other websites - so no reason to complain about the site, (4) - when visiting the site there are no pop-ups or other irritating gimmics, again; no reason to complain or discuss the site. Greetz, JanT (talk) 14:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Accusations of bad faith do not help your argument. No one has explained yet how this complies with Wikipedia's core policy of verifiability. A "Keep" reason such as WP:ILIKEIT is not persuasive. When all attempts have failed to find reliable sources to verify an article, it should be deleted (see WP:DEL#REASON). This article about a website must meet the notability guidelines just like any other article, regardless of subject. WP:WEB says that primary sources alone are not sufficient to establish notability. Can anyone cite even one:

non-trivial published work about this website whose source is independent of the site itself? "The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or its creator) have actually considered the content or site notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it".
well-known and independent award from either a publication or organization the website has won? Getting 501(c)(3) non-profit status from the IRS is not a notable "award".
medium distributing the content independent of the anonymous creators?

Unless affirmative answers can be supplied, deletion is clearly warranted according to the relevent Wikipedia policies and guidelines. JGHowes ^talk 17:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't mean to make accusations of bad faith , although I could have chosen more neutral words. It just surprised me that the site was added on the list by someone who mentiones several times he is member of or associated to a Christian group not famous for their open minded aproach on gay lifestyle. Just that someone doesn't like the subject is no reason to keep it out. I don't like crack of heroine but both are on Wiki, as they should be. And the same should count for Nifty Archieve. I only wonder why the article should be proposed for speedy deletion and not the normal deletion. I did find some external references regarding the earliest versions of the archieve, but these references are in another language (Dutch) and not on the internet (but in a history/log file of a videotex BBS chat/discussion in 1993 or 1994. These references discuss the forced closure of the ftp site after loads of hate-mail to the hostmaster of the university where the site was hosted. I'm trying to convince the owner of that videotex host to make these chat-log files available online so I can refer to it. As there is a complete Category :Erotica and pornography websites I can't see the reason for Speedy Deletion. The only notable difference between the sites mentioned in that Cat and Nifty seems to be the fact that Nifty serves the gay / lesbian community. (this statement is based on visiting 12 randomly selected articles in Category:Erotica and pornography websites. JanT (talk) 22:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Er, this is not "Speedy Deletion" – Articles for Deletion is our normal process. Again, deletion is decided according to the previously mentioned policies and guidelines of WP:V, WP:N, and WP:WEB, not on the basis of personal opinion regarding subject matter. The articles I checked in that category seem have multiple reliable sources cited as references – this one does not even pass WP:GNG. JGHowes ^talk 00:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

In that case I take back all my words regarding the speedy deletion. I got that idea when reading the message added to my talk page. Maybe this misunderstanding is the result due to the different handling of deletion processes between the Dutch language Wiki and the English language Wiki. And again: I'm trying to get two external sources published on the internet (so people can verify it) that discuss Nifty, but for one is the main problem the format and languahe (Videotex markup coding in the files needed to be filtered and the logging isn't mine, so I could maybe overcome the formatting problems but I don't have the copyrights). The 2nd problems is that it is part of a private NNTP discussion-feed and I only have a very limited bit of text, which is imho not really convincing - and again: I don't own nor have the full logs. JanT (talk) 05:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Delete, as wholly unreferenced to reliable sources. Alexa rankings and general knowledge can be treated as decent indicators of notability, but in this case the indication is not backed up by the expected coverage. WP:V is not optional; and a website that's had no independent coverage we can source to simply cannot be verifiably written about in an encyclopedia. ~ mazca ^talk 00:51, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Delete refs are shaky at best. RS and V are crucial. And afraid I can't help but wonder why all these IPs and new accounts are here. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Re:Rlevse: Please see my comments to User:JGHowest. I do have external and not in any way connected source, but this material is not yet publically available. The few things that can be verified is -ar least- some of its age via The Internet Archieve project and the age of the site is notable. Also the IRS status is verifyable, and not many porn sites are tax-wise seen as charities.

As noted over there I'm busy in getting the mentioned source available on the internet, but apart from getting permission and also some more of the logfile (I only have 20 lines relevant logging) ia ongoing but demands extra work (technical and finding an old PC with 5 1/4 floppy and/or old tape streamer to read the logs

Another notable side of this erotica site is that is is 100% free from day 1, no annoying pop-ups and via an active moderator quite good indexed and catagorized, unlike many other (even paid) sites.

The age of the site can also be checked via other sites keeping stats, as the mentioned Internet Archive and Alexa, is also the tymesramps on the files. And although self-research is NOT ALLOWED I can speak from personal experience [when working for an Erotica Videotex amd earlier for a BBS on premium rate numbers we used stories on Nifty as source as early as in 1994-1996 when we were very active [and our last Videotex service seized in 2001).

And even another reason why there is a lack of recent references to the archive is the fact that the site has been always there -at least in the idea of the current users that missed the Usenet/NNTP period, ler alone the FTP and Gopher period. No one discusses the existence of the [[[WWW]] as such, it is taken for granted. But again: I'm trying to get references online and contacted the University in question and asked the webmaster for help in pointing external sources. Please give me a few more days to find some external sources and references as I think at least one non-straight site should be included in a Catagory: Erotica and porn websites.

Many thanks, JanT (talk) 02:51, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Delete per Rlevse. Sock floods always make me suspicious. Stifle (talk) 10:00, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

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.