Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SkyscraperCity (4th nomination)

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. There seems to be little dispute that the sourcing isn't up to general expectations (even several "keep" arguments acknowledge this). A couple of editors also brought up an "IAR keep", but there was not consensus that an IAR exception is warranted in this case. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:16, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SkyscraperCity[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Fourth attempt at deletion here. This article was deleted for the third time in February and recreated again in April. This version at least has some independent reliable sources but these are all just passing mentions to me rather than significant coverage (some are just images that were sourced there, not really coverage at all). I think it's time for a serious WP:SALTing of the page and to suggest that any discussion about recreating it go through WP:DRV first. Ricky81682 (talk) 21:52, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:06, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:07, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep You know, why don't we just give it some time to naturally develop. I think that there are plently of articles out there that don't even warrant existence, such as say Totes McGoats, which I would've nominated for deletion but haven't felt like doing. There are sources out there and there is a Portuguese version of this article which hasn't been deleted. We are just WP:Beating a dead horse. Buffaboy ^talk 00:01, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Buffaboy, OTHERCRAPEXISTS is on the list of Arguments_to_avoid_in_deletion_discussions. It somehow manages to become an even worse argument when that other crap is on a unanimous road to not existing. Alsee (talk) 17:28, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete This isn't going anywhere, so I'll just pile on to stay with the right side of history. Buffaboy ^talk 02:39, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep per the information uncovered by User:Joy. Some WP:RS are better than none. Buffaboy ^talk 18:18, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete without prejudice, due to lack of non-trivial coverage from reliable third parties. Regards, Yamaguchi先生 (talk) 00:33, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and SALT. I have given this further consideration and in light of the repeated re-creation of this article, with community consensus supporting deletion each and every time the subject was considered at WP:AfD, the appropriate channel going forward would be Wikipedia:Deletion review. As expressed before, the subject fails WP:WEB and related notability guidelines as it lacks non-trivial coverage from reliable third parties, as it has in the AfD listings prior. Regards, Yamaguchi先生 (talk) 18:49, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It strikes me as odd that an article about a fictional video game, Races of StarCraft, can hold greater notability that a well-known website. I think this is a major flaw in the WP:RS system as well as WP:N, but that won't have much of an impact on this AfD as it will be business as usual. Buffaboy ^talk 03:00, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you're making a presumption and then backtracking logically from that. Given the lack of reliable sources about it since 2007, it's not clear to me how this is a "well-known" website. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 15:11, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It has a global Alexa ranking of 2,361; by contrast, SkyscraperPage has a ranking of 34,261. So there's a clear difference~~, but these statistics will not aid in a losing battle when my premonition says the page will be deleted.~~ Buffaboy ^talk 15:42, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The best sources are worthless passing mentions. I checked the Portuguese version via Google Translate, their sourcing is worse than ours. I'm not sure what the usual standard for Salting is, but I'd support it. 4 creations and 4 deletions is wasting both article-writer's time and deleter's time. This hasn't increased in Notability since it was first deleted 8.5 years ago. I'd say that is suggestive of a low likelihood of becoming notable in the next 8.5 years. Alsee (talk) 17:28, 4 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete~~ as failing WP:GNG at this time. If an article needs to "develop", particularly if it has been deleted previously, the place to develop it is either user space or WP:AFC. The padding of sources doesn't fix the problems it has, as the number of sources isn't a criteria for inclusion, the quality of them, plus the amount of significant coverage, does. Ask to userfy it if you want to work on it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:43, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Alsee's comment. APK whisper in my ear 09:12, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I nom'd this del last go round but there are a number of publications which discuss the activities of the forum, community members and the like. [1] [2] [3] [4] FAIR has a small biblio of content from the Las Vegas Law Review involving the site [5]; and people are sourcing some of their works as can been seen by Google Scholar. Lots of smaller mentions as well in media -- the reason we shy away from "mentions" is because it is difficult to write articles with them and we prefer nice fat chunks of text where the work is done for us -- but journalists are calling it "influential"[6] and constantly citing the opinions of forum users there for some reason[7][8]; plus a lot of stuff in Polish which I can't read[9] (they are the 316th site in Poland among people who have installed Alexa's spyware; and 2300th in entire world[10]; similarweb has similar metrics[11].. and if wanna data mine them: here) and appear to be a robust and frequently used media source for architectural photographs used in media reports about various topics, similar to Commons.[12] -- dsprc ^[talk] 19:47, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The first four links are the same as before: links that reference that the forum hosted an image. The FAIR article mentioning the lawsuit notes the exact same issue ironically, namely that the forum hosts copyrighted text (likely the same as the images). I'm not sure that because it's lax on copyright and will host copyrighted images and reproduce entire articles is particularly a notable feat. Then, the exact quote here is "According to a poll of skyscrapercity.com, an influential urbanistic forum, ...." (with no other mention) which makes a influential forum which I guess is useful but not particularly significant coverage. I find all these metrics citations to be nothing more than WP:PRIMARY sources and WP:OR about whether or not a metric means anything here. Statements like "Fans on the forum skyscrapercity.com have noted that the plans are also similar to Apple's flagship store at Regent Street in London" aren't citing their opinion, just lazily citing an opinion that people on an forum think things are similar which isn't particularly important. ~~As to why the forum doesn't care about "mentions", I can see why: because following the WP:SIGCOV guidelines have caused this page to be deleted multiple times before.~~ -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:14, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Ricky81682: Just a bit of Devil's Advocate. I agree with your overall position. Unlike the other keep votes (again, which I do not agree with) at least I tried to present some evidence other than opinion. -- dsprc ^[talk] 15:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Dsprc: Sorry, I wasn't trying to be personal, just evaluating the sources in detail. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:06, 8 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and improve Perhaps you should first have a proper look at it. This is clearly the most extensive community on urban skyscrapers and construction projects, with more original fact-based and picture content than most other sites. It is often referenced in local media on construction news, as there are also insiders of various construction and property companies, as well as high profile architects, designers, renderers and model builders. I really don't see how this could fail relevancy by any chance. The significantly smaller community SkyscraperPage has a Wiki article for years, while obviously it's just hiding behind skyscraper graphics to be listed as an information portal. There's also online magazines, web articles and portal content on SkyscraperCity. Cheers, Horst-schlaemma (talk) 04:14, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be because, after seven years, no one can point to any actual examples of "references in local media" that aren't just "here's an image they had on their forums somewhere"? There's been "proper looks" over the years and each time, it's just recreated with similar excuses about how it's really actually notable with a just a little more time. In contrast, SkyscraperPage has two reliable independent sources that actually discuss the website. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:04, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep, oddly enough. I did a few Google Books searches regarding the site, and it's fair to say that WP:SIGCOV is not met, but nevertheless this website seems to have a fair bit of mindshare, because it seems that it has been referenced from hundreds of books by now. So it stands to reason that we should do what a book would do - keep a footnote quickly explaining the topic, in a sentence or so. In Wikipedia parlance, that would probably be a very short article that just states that it's a website with a forum, which is verifiable. This seems obvious to many readers, but isn't really. It would probably help a bit to elucidate to readers that it's not a reliable source in and of itself. Also, it shouldn't be marked as a stub, since the encyclopedic expansion potential is unclear. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree with this approach. -- Horst-schlaemma (talk) 20:55, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Maybe nobody has written something direcly about this, but being not only mentioned but also used by experts for lots of their publications is also important. True, there won't be any big article without direct attention, but some basic facts are verifiable.--Müdigkeit (talk) 21:41, 6 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and improve. Notable enough. Elk Salmon (talk) 04:55, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The website itself has been blacklisted per MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#skyscrapercity.com so the page would need to be whitelisted to include the forum link. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:09, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Horst-schlaemma, Joy, Müdigkeit, Elk Salmon: Please provide evidence that this subject is a particularly notable forum and warrants inclusion. Even I had much difficulty and needed to stretch it quite a bit for the ones I found as they are extremely weak (only reason for presenting was balance -- thinking no others would -- and this position was easily and quickly refuted). We have articles for many notable online communities which are extensively written about in the press and elsewhere (4chan, for example); however, this does not appear to be one of them. -- dsprc ^[talk] 15:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I still see references to the website at the fifteenth page of Google Books search results, at https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=skyscrapercity.com+-wikipedia+-%22books,+llc%22&pws=0&start=140 Again, there's no dispute from me that each of those seems to be a very weak reference, but there's just a crapload of this in the wild, and it's past the point where it can be dismissed out of hand. I don't see how we would be doing our readers a disservice if we left in a simple and brief mention of this thing. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:47, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You aren't concerned that, after over eight years, the best anyone can find is possible passing references in other languages from the 15th pages of Google books? And where is the evidence that this is referred to or anything by actual experts? This and this "references" are just again someone copying an image from a discussion on the forum, not particularly substantive and without context, no idea whether the image was itself a copyright violation or someone's personal work or what. Again, no actual discussion of the forum, just examples of its usage as a image host. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:06, 8 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You misunderstood the point of linking that. The point isn't that a reference on the 15th page is special, the point is that it is not special. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 14:20, 8 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I misread that. Struck my comments out. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:33, 8 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: More refs will be provided asap, no reason to be hasty here. All the best, Horst-schlaemma (talk) 15:23, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. These sources are thin gruel indeed. After this long, we still have nothing but namechecks - not one single article *about* this subject, just a few passing mentions. This is not hasty. We already deleted this article three times for the same issue. Enough is enough. Guy (Help!) 16:51, 7 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note to potential closer: - Please relist a time or two. I've voted to delete, but if it really has been cited that many times, I would prefer to allow an extra week or so, to give every chance. Either we find enough sources here, or we salt the earth, but if there is a chance (and that is one hell of an Alexa ranking), then we don't need to rush. Relists are cheap. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:45, 8 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Incubate or Redirect: Possibly draft it or just redirect it to other articles like Londonist and have a brief mention of it. Vincent60030 (talk) 07:28, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: While a lot of comments have been made, could do with a bit more discussion. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:51, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:51, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as failing notability at this time. The so-called sources are too weak to support a keep as a stand alone article. Kierzek (talk) 14:06, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I have added some more sources, in my opinion the subject of article currently is a subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself. --Jklamo (talk) 17:30, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There are six citations for the opening sentence "internet forum website for skyscraper hobbyists and enthusiasts" ... this is over-reaching. 97.99.101.135 (talk) 11:43, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Specific quotes from users were quoted in 2007 Miami Herald story titled "Engineer photographing city on the fly", that most likely included pictures as well. Access would require paying to view their archives, they remove online articles quite quickly and it proves a hassle. The whole article http://www.kyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=461996 < appears to be quoted here (add "s" at beginning-ssc is blacklisted). This is slightly relevant to history as not even 10 years later camera drones are on their way to a dime a dozen. This was an RC airplane. Apparently even a video was included with the story. A reference can almost be concocted from the forum.^[1] < date is from infopig archive. This is more than a passing mention of the site. Not only quotes and pictures, but the fact that the site proved better than Flickr for photo sharing (though images are usually hosted on Flickr). B137 (talk) 05:17, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

^ Spangler, Nicholas (April 11, 2007). "Engineer photographing city on the fly". Miami Herald.

I've added the Miami Herald link and am working on other refs, have changed vote to keep. I don't really think this subject is a long shot, but it needs to be kept well track off to not get too trivial. A leaning towards notable media mentions vs post counts could be good. B137 (talk) 07:33, 16 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral leaning keep - I was for deleting above, and I can't see where it clearly and obviously passes GNG, but there are so many pointers and minor mentions and other factors that make me think this is bordering on a WP:IAR KEEP. I think I've done that twice in 50,000 edits, so it isn't something I use often. It boils down to "is Wikipedia better off with or without the article?" and I think we are better off with since it is so well known, I just can't find enough sources to pass the normal criteria, and it clearly doesn't. Keep in mind, criteria isn't a hard pass/fail line, it is a fuzzy line, a really good general purpose guideline that works 99.99% of the time. This isn't a spam article, or some wannabe superbusinessman's biography, it is an article on a website that is references an insane number of times by other high quality websites, meaning this might qualify to be that .01%. This is exactly the circumstance that WP:IAR exists for: exceedingly rare situations where we are better off ignoring the rules. It is just a matter of whether others agree we are better off with it or not. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:44, 12 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Delete - Wikipedia is not a directory WP:NOTDIRECTORY In all the years that this website has been posted and re-posted, here and in Portugal, there has never been any meaningful associated content. There is nothing to say here other than post directory info like membership numbers and Alexa rating. 97.99.101.135 (talk) 12:09, 13 December 2015 (UTC) — 97.99.101.135 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Membership numbers have no relevancy to an article if it isn't notable. I don't think WP:NOTDIRECTORY applies in this case as well. The sources uncovered help to create the base of what could be a good article. Buffaboy ^talk 19:21, 13 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your advocacy for this website is noted - both in authoring the article and your six comments on this page. 97.99.101.135 (talk) 00:06, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I could care less if this article is given another chance or is deleted. I re-created it because I thought I could find sources to improve it, and it turns out they exist. On a separate matter, I'm concerned your mere presence here is for a WP:SPA. Buffaboy ^talk 00:30, 14 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete we have given it time to develop substantive coverage in multiple independent reliable sources, and the best we get are mere mentions (like this and this touted by dsprc above), and comments blogged on the site getting repeated. Altough it is referenced by other high quality websites, they do not provide coverage of it. Is Wikipedia better off with or without the article? My answer is "without"; forum sites in general are not notable, to rise above that requires secondary sources that actually discuss the particular site in detail. As the general notability guidelines specifically say: Significant coverage addresses the topic directly and in detail. --Bejnar (talk) 22:11, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 09:14, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanz ^talk 01:04, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete for now at best as I also see why and how we could simply keep this and there are surely better articles for deleting but, also, this article could be better and the past histories are noticeable and of concern. In this case, delete until perhaps a better article is available and I suggest using someone restart by draft and userfy or also AfC. Notifying the only still active AfDer Whpq. SwisterTwister talk 06:02, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fairly Strong Keep The sources aren't great - as we've established above - although I think that as there are enough to warrant a keep. The article is pretty bad at athe moment, although with work and proper refernecing it could become a good article. An article's stsate is no reason for it top be delted, and there is no reason to userfy that couldn't be replaced with "work on in the main namespace and let others help". Not a great article, and one with shaky sources, but one that is just about good enough to survive and so shouldn't be deleted. RailwayScientist (talk) 09:39, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So you want to keep it despite it being a terrible article with cruddy sourcing even after multiple previous deletions. Um, right. Guy (Help!) 09:57, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete for lack of significant coverage. A great deal of effort has been put in to try to justify cursory links to this subject in other places, but they can't override the guideline that coverage in reputable secondary sources needs to be significant, and primarily related to the subject of the article. Photos and comments that exist somewhere on this site may be proven as notable, but they do not in themselves transfer their notability to the site if no reputable source outside of Wikipedia has judged it worthy of significant attention. Combined with the questionable decision of the article creators to continuously re-create this page after multiple deletions, admins should strongly consider salting it as well. If, at some point in the future, this website becomes notable it can go through a normal process for recreation in a correct manner. In the meantime, it is not Wikipedia's function to MAKE the website notable. -Markeer 17:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - fails WP:WEB, which requires more than brief descriptions of web sites and the services that they provide, which is all that this is. There's the software that the forum runs on, the number of users it hosts, some descriptions of content which has been included, and an achivement by one user of the site which itself is not really notable, but no evidence of encyclopedic notability for the website itself, and very little detailed coverage in reliable sources. We're in 2016 now, that's fourteen years for this website to have made some kind of impact and be written about in reliable sources, but that coverage isn't there. It's just built up a fan base of interested users, and it provides some utility for architects so it gets name-dropped by architects from time to time, in the same way that I occasionally mention the QuickBooks users' forum, but volume of trivial mentions does not mean notability. WP:SALT this so that this fourth time being deleted is the last. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 18:39, 4 January 2016 (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.

[SSCmiami-1] Spangler, Nicholas (April 11, 2007). "Engineer photographing city on the fly". Miami Herald.

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