Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solar Empire

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. - Mailer Diablo 16:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Solar Empire

No indicated notability, seems to fail WP:V, WP:WEB and WP:SOFTWARE. Some additional info: Alexa ranking is 5,320,277. Peephole 01:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment: What does the Alexa rating have to do with anything? Solare Empire is hosted on who knows how many servers. The Trafic rating for the Quantum-star domain is 378,378 [1] - Notable enough yet? And that's just for one domain. 22:26 UTC - 4-Aug-2006 User:Moriarty

Keep: solar-empire.net just hosts the homepage portal, the majority of users visit the SourceForge project page and Quantum Star, the most popular distribution. Traffic Rank for quantum-star.com: 378,378 (up4,007). In January Solar Empire was ranked #6 on SourceForge in the category turn-based strategy games. --Mjac 18:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Most probably mentioned at some point:

Solar Empire is one of the oldest PHP Games still in existence as a "living" project, with multiple forks and support (continual) from multiple developers. The front website is an informal developer meeting place. Of the official websites, Quantum Star Solar Empire has an Alexa ranking of 378,378.

The project (both SE and QS) have consistently been among the top 5 PHP Turn Based and Real Time Strategy Games on the Sourceforge.net site - the standard lookup point for open source projects in all programming languages. Activity has likewise consistently remained above 90%. These two points are a matter of public record. Statistics for all SF projects are available at their respective project listings. With QS (the most popular distribution since 2003), ranking on SF has never fallen below 15,000. Highest point was in May/June 2005 ranked 767. This is the ranking out of all projects on SF irrespective of language, genre, license, etc. The ranking is based on page views, downloads, development stats. It is a seasonal measure but the trend has improved consistently year on year. It's worth noting two SE games are listed - both with similar stats as separate projects. We jointly occupy 2 of the top-ten slots in our category genre most of the time...

Article was originally added by an otherwise unknown player. It was subsequently edited with the support of almost all the current developers and only after consultation with the original authors (none of which are developers). It has since been openly edited by numerous others, none of which have made major edits (our consultation paid off with no disputes evident).

The subsequent contributor did not make things up, if that's a concern. The facts in the article were checked (twice), the writer is a reputable source (a professional PHP and Web Application Security analyst with a Big 4 Chartered Accounting firm; on the role-call at Zend.com as an Article contributor for Devzone; web administrator for upstart Patterns For PHP). Author is also ranked as Guru on the PHP Developer Network forums as a daily contributor to the net's largest PHP Forums. Currently in the process of writing a book on PHP with several others - in fact he's an Administrator for that book project.

The QS blog which covers SE and QS in detail, along with PHP Game Development and PHP Security as topics has frequently been reported on by Zend's Devzone (the company behind the PHP language), Planet-PHP and PHPDeveloper.org - these are the primary PHP related news/blog/article reporting sites for PHP on the web. It's relatively difficult to get listed on these without proof of some professionalism in PHP and a flair for writing relevant, informed and interesting content.

Any specific issues, please free to expand upon them.--Regards, Pádraic Brady aka Maugrim The Reaper --Maugrimtr 23:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been added to the list of CVG deletions. Peephole 13:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I'll just Copy + paste my comments from the talk page:

• As stated in the artcile this game is now 7 years old. It's not something that only popped up a couple of days ago. It's likely amoung the oldest still-active PHP games out there.
• It's had THOUSANDS (probably ten's of thousands) of unique users play it. Is that notable enough?
• It's a fully formed article. If you want to delete something, may I suggest one of the many thousands of stubs that are lying around this place?
• This article wasn't created by any of the developers (that I'm aware of). Look at the history. It was created by one "The King of Hearts". When we (the devs) found out about the article, we proceeded to update it and correct many the errors. These devs are specifically listed in the SE history as Maugrimtr, DJCapelis, mjac and Moriarty
• Run a google for "Solar Empire". The top 8 results are all for this game, preceding even a TV series's IMDB entry of the same-name as well as the soon to be released "Sins of a Solar Empire" which comes in at ninth entry in the search.---22:09 UTC - 4-Aug-2006 User:Moriarty

Comment: Someone mentioned a possible WP:V violation due to the fact that it hasn't been reviewed in one of the gaming rags. While this may or may not be accurate it seems a bit silly, CVS logs are _much_ more verifiable than anything out of a new rag, or am I missing something?

CVS logs, near as I can tell (I am not a SourceForge junkie and therefore only have a vague understanding of what CVS logs even are), are either primary sources (e.g. statements made by the developers) or unreliable secondary sources (e.g. forum-esque posts). WP:V and its cohort WP:RS explicitly want reliable secondary sources, which do not appear to exist. Nifboy 02:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Have you guys changed the rules (WP editors)? The last header said this was a "notability" deletion thing and if you disagreed you could delete the header giving reasons (which is what I did). Now it's been changed and points here and says not to delete the header. I wish you folks would be consistant. This particlar debate is very one-sided as I don't see anyone giving any reasons FOR deletion (now that the notability thing has disappeared). -- 22:09 UTC - 4-Aug-2006 User:Moriarty

• Weak delete. We have a metric ton of articles on various SourceForge game projects; Solar Empire is the 49th most downloaded in the "Turn-based games" category, right between Attal: Lords of Doom and VGA Planets, surrounded by Freelords, Project Xenocide, and Promisance. The 'Pedia is markedly inclusive towards commercial games, particularly since pretty much all console releases are guaranteed reviews in major media; OSS games, however, get virtually no press, and therefore are not nearly as verifiable. Since WP:V is hard policy, I'm going to lean in that direction unless 1up or Kotaku or somebody has an article and/or review on it. Nifboy 07:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep: The article needs some work, but I really don't see the need to delete it. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 08:40, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per reasons cited by Moriarty and Maugrimtr on article's talk page. Djcapelis 07:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep E-gads this process is convoluted. I bet the folks who came up with it believe firmly in Bureaucratite. User:Moriarty 22:09, 6 August 2006 (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.