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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 no consensus. This article relies too heavily on non-secondary sources, and will likely find itself up for deletion again if this is not fixed quickly. Much spamminess has been removed, but this still needs work. Non consensus to delete at this time (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 14:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Umbraco[edit]

Umbraco (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Promotion for non-notable software product. I have been unable to find any coverage of this product, including 0 gnews hits. Was speedy-deleted two weeks ago. Haakon (talk) 10:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • "Non-notable" in the sense of lack of press releases, not in sense of downloads and popularity growth. More than 250k downloads in 2009, over 100% growth rate and the 2nd biggest Web CMS on the ASP.NET stack. Article updated with reliable 3rd party source (Microsoft Codeplex) --NHartvig (talk) 21:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • According to Guthrie, Umbraco will be used for the new ASP.Net Website. That's notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.189.61.226 (talk) 15:23, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's hearsay; Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and needs reliable sources. Haakon (talk) 15:25, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Reference: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/01/24/about-technical-debates-both-in-general-and-regarding-asp-net-web-forms-and-asp-net-mvc-in-particular.aspx#7321918 --NHartvig (talk) 15:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • I would not be comfortable with a blog as the reference for a statement that umbraco is used in the ASP.Net site as it is a self-published reference, *but* nobody says we should put this information in the Wikipedia entry for umbraco; in fact, I hope nobody goes ahead and does that as in our effort to prove what is obvious to people who have taken an interest in .NET CMS products to fellow Wikipedians with not such interests, we are risking making the article worse. If and when ASP.NET redesign their site using umbraco and state it officially maybe this will make it into the article, maybe not. But for now, the decision as reported in Guthrie's blog, carries some significance if anyone doubts that umbraco is the #2 .NET CMS. I believe that the CMS Market report in the article's references shows that. Miltiadis Kokkonidis (talk) 09:32, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]


I am not affilliated with the company that develops this product in any way. This dispute started a few hours ago when the article I created was not even worthwhile a stub; thought it could do with additional work, it is significantly better now. The article is about a major player in the CMS market. 0 gnews hits proves nothing except that gnews hits is not an adequate criterion. Though I recognise its value as a factor in such decisions in the absense of specialist knowledge, in this case such knowledge exists. The independent survey mentioned in the references has a well-documented and credible methodology for selecting the 20 CMSs it considers noteworthy; it excludes a number of CMSs that have wikipedia articles, but recognises Umbraco as the second most important .NET CMS in terms of market share. Miltiadis Kokkonidis (talk) 13:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Haakon (talk) 13:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep. The claim of being the 2nd in .net market checked out [1]; the full report, which not free, presumably has more coverage. There's also a long review there too. Pcap ping 13:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC) (see below)[reply]
  • Delete, vacuous and unambiguous advertising: ... a simple and lightweight system that leverages the power of the technologies it is based on...

    ("Leverage" as a verb in this sense is one of those red-flag words that make you want to reach through the screen and smash somebody's keyboard before they offend again. Does it say anything that "use" doesn't? It does sound more peppy; as if, like Archimedes, you're ready to move the world. But if they wrote "uses the technologies it is based on", it'd be too obvious they were rabbiting on without saying anything. And they have to tell us that it's "powerful". At any rate, using "leverage" as a verb this way is blatant POV-pushing.)

    At any rate, "CMSwire.com" sure sounds like a medium of "limited interest and circulation", not enough to sustain an article about a commercial product. I looked at the link, and my impression is that this product is second from the bottom in market share. The article is a general market survey, not specifically about this product. And tellingly, that website's poll asks: "Survey Question: "Which of these companies or projects have you heard of?""[2] - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 18:34, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I once heard David Crystal saying how bad WikiPedia as an encyclopedia is and basing that claim on the fact that according to the Wikipedia article about him, his kids still lived with him. I fixed this an hour later making my point about what Wikipedia has that old-fashioned encyclopedias do not.

Once an article is up, it can be fixed. I am not entirely happy with the article myself. But the main question is if an entry on umbraco has a place in wikipedia or not. Given that nobody here seems to be suggesting that articles about less noteworthy CMSs than Umbraco be deleted, I believe this question has a clear answer. The survey I am referencing in the article is free and it contains the top 20 CMSs in terms of market share. There are countless CMSs out there and WikiPedia has articles about CMSs that are not even in those top 20. So, as far as I am concerned, it is clear that, currently, WikiPedia considers noteworthy CMSs with a market share smaller than umbraco's. The fact that it is the #2 .NET CMS and follows a different approach to other CMSs carries some extra weight in my decision to write and defend this article. For me, there is no question of whether there should be a WikiPedia article on umbraco or not. My opinion would certainly have been different if there were no articles on a number of other CMSs, but there are -- and to be honest, I prefer it this way.

Having established, I believe, that there should be an article on umbraco, there is a second question to be considered: should the article, as it stands, be deleted, because it has content of no value, is badly written, or is part of some marketing campaign? As long as none of the above *clearly* applies and an umbraco entry has a place in Wikipedia, effort should be made to make the article better. One can change 'leverage' into 'use' if he/she is so inclined; there was something I wanted to convey with that word, but unfortunatelly it does look like it came out of an IT product marketing brochure. 'Simple', I will delete as it is so ambiguous that at the end it means nothing. `Lightweight', I am inclined to keep because the binary distribution downloaded impressively quickly, something much appreciated by someone who first programmed on a Spectrum with 16KB of RAM and has an aversion to bloatware. However, I am not entirely happy with this word either. But then again, I am not entirely happy with the article as a whole either; but I prefer a WikiPedia with it in it, than one without it. It is work in progress and hopefully myself and others will continue to improve it.

To propose that an article be deleted because one disagrees with the use of certain words is counter-productive. Given that I am using my real name and putting my personal reputation at stake here, I am more than willing to listen to criticisms for improving the article. But I believe they are a seperate issue best addressed in the article's talk page and that the article should stay. I hope this gets resolved quickly because I am spending too much time here and too little time improving the article itself.

Miltiadis Kokkonidis (talk) 18:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Certain terms irrevocably brand an "article" as advertising. The vile verb "leverage" is one already mentioned; my favorite software bete noire is "solution", but all fields fall victim to "up and coming"/"rapidly emerging"/"radical new" in various permutations. In general, anything non-neutral in tone which sounds like you're trying to sell us the product counts against retention. --Orange Mike | Talk 03:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
With the help of an IP user, I've cleaned up the spammy language. I admit not having read it past the notability claim in the lead previously. Pcap ping 05:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Given that it has not been more than a couple of days that I wrote what I wrote I had not distanced myself enough to do exactly what you have done. Thanks! It looks much better now! Ain't Wikipedia, great? ;-) Miltiadis Kokkonidis (talk) 09:15, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the site with more content about the framework and hopefully some more verifiable references. --Mardenpb1 (talk) 18:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep While this is not definitive, the case that Umbraco is 2nd in the .net CMS market is demonstrated by being 2nd in downloads after DNN on both the Microsoft Web Platform Installer and Codeplex and above mojoPortal on Codeplex, both of which have their own articles. Whether a single tweet constitutes a campaign is questionable, and even if there is a campaign, whether it is relevant to this debate is also questionable. But there is a strong case that the 2nd most downloaded .Net based CMS is deserving of a Wikipedia article. This article requires work and the request to improve citations is valid. However the the AfD is grossly disproportionate. --Mardenpb1 (talk) 21:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • That is WP:OR, and those number change over time. We need a WP:SECONDARY source to record that such and such had that much marked share at some point. The CMSWire article seems to be one, but I see it has been disputed further below. Pcap ping 07:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The referred tweet is from Janus Boye - an independent CMS analyst (http://jboye.com). --NHartvig (talk) 21:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just searched for Umbraco on Google News and came up with one result, same as for mojoPortal. I searched for a number of other CMSs on the List of content management systems page and many came up with zero results. I also note that many of the other CMSs on this list have sections lifted straight from corporate websites. That said, I do not think Google News is a good indication of notability - downloads and portfolio are. A number of popular websites are built on Umbraco: [3] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.217.60 (talk) 00:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, this is a problem with so many articles on CMS systems. These systems are a dime a dozen, and their owners are often underhanded with their marketing techniques, including abusing Wikipedia. Please take a few minutes to correct the errors you've found, or at least point them out on their talk pages so someone can deal with them. Meanwhile, note that other stuff exists, which is no argument for keeping this article. Wikipedia is a work in progress and not consistent yet. Haakon (talk) 07:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note If you open up the Google News timeline to 2004-2010 Google News reports "about 74" references to the word Umbraco. Not all references relate to the CMS project, but certainly some of them do. If Google News is to be considered useful to this discussion (which is probably debatable) then let's at least be thorough in checking the data. --Bdunwood (talk) 19:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Umbraco is a significant player in the area of .NET CMS. The two referernces to cmswire don't count for anything because of the way cmswire operate / post reviews. In my view cmswire references should be removed to improve the article. The figures quoted in the Popularity section are somewhat misleading. The figures shown are the total number of project downloads (including readme and documentation archive downloads, not just the WCMS source code). The article certainly needs work, but based on the significant marketshare it has I think it should stay. Sendalldavies (talk) 02:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If those references are no good, how do you propose we establish what you just wrote? Pcap ping 06:57, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding download stats: look at http://umbraco.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=33743. There are 7 other downloads besides the main download file. These downloads are included in their stats.
Regarding cmswire: I've looked through their website and see no web page regarding how they operate in terms of posting articles. To establish my claim one would have to ask for information about having your own CMS reviewed. cmswire email me every few months asking for permission to write a "review" in exchange for a reciprocal link. Such reviews are not independent or unbiased as product owners get the last edit prior to its publication. The site is basically a review farm making money from selling ad space (http://www.simplermedia.com/mediakit/v1-00/titles/cmswire/rates.php)
Regarding "significant player in .NET CMS" and marketshare: my comment comes from professional experience in this field; people wanting help improving their website or wanting to migrate their website to a different server. Sendalldavies (talk) 12:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm the founder and publisher of CMSWire and would like to say that your characterization of the site as "basically a review farm making money from selling ad space" is way off the mark. We publish roughly 200 original articles per month with 90% of those written by regular, on-staff writers. If you look at our CMS reviews section (http://www.cmswire.com/cms/cms-reviews/) you can see that since the Umbraco review on May 28, 2009 there has been exactly one other review published, on December 9, 2009. If this is your definition of a review farm, then something is very wrong with this discussion. Further, regarding your assertion that someone at CMSWire emails you every few months for "permission to write a 'review' in exchange for a reciprocal link" I would assert that your statement is a) confusing -- what does "permission to write a review" mean exactly? b) an exaggeration -- was it me who emailed you? How many times exactly? And can you provide the precise dates that this happened?, and c) the interaction was misrepresented -- we recruit specialized outside contributors all the time as a way of bringing in valuable, current lessons from the field. Nearly all trade magazines do such things -- there's just no way that journalists can know as much as field consultants. This practice is a great way of sharing knowledge in a sector. Regarding the discussion of a "reciprocal link", guest writers on CMSWire are always entitled to a bio section in their article and this includes a link to their project or company, etc. I consider this respectful and friendly. Reciprocal links are typically considered "link exchanges" and that is not at all what we are doing. I fail to see how a link in the author's bio detracts from the content, which IMHO should be evaluated independently. In reference to the Umbraco review written by Barb Mosher, this review is -- at any rate -- free of any such alleged contamination. Barb is the managing editor of CMSWire and labored rather intensively on this review. It is generally credited with being the most thorough review of the Umbraco CMS. I'm happy address any further questions any of you have about our processes or publication. Though I must say that this being my first discussion as part of Wikipedia, I am disappointed by the assertions made -- especially those that I know personally to be exaggerated beyond reason. --Bdunwood (talk) 16:10, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Apart from the question of publishing "reviews" in return for reciprocal favours, which means that CMSWire is not an independent source, there is also the question of how CMSWire sources its own articles. I have seen CMSWire articles which have actually stated that their only source is Twitter, which makes it an unreliable source. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:56, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note JamesBWatson, CMSWire does not "[publish] reviews in return for reciprocal favours". And it certainly does not publish reviews based on Twitter content. Reviews are published based on the merit of the content. The review in question was written by CMSWire's managing editor, based on her original research and testing (as I mentioned above). I don't understand this campaign to slander the review or the source in question without yourself providing evidence for your claims. CMSWire is not The New York Times. OK, I get that. But if there are any real questions about the quality or motivations for the Umbraco CMS review I have yet to hear them. --Bdunwood (talk) 17:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Even google takes paid advertisements. I see no indication there that CMSWire takes money in exchange for reviews. What you are proposing as an alternative is original research, and not very useful because the download counter gets reset on every version. I'm changing my vote to delete. Pcap ping 13:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This one doesn't reset - 97.000 downloads in 10 months, 3rd most downloaded app on the Microsoft Web Stack. You have hundreds of articles on WikiPedia covering less notable than this: http://microsoft.com/web/gallery/Categories.aspx --NHartvig (talk) 15:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Covered only in one source, of questionable reliability. Pcap ping 13:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As is stated above by Miltiadis Kokkonidis, I think (and I'm new here and want to learn how to be a good participant) that the questions of article content quality and whether or not to keep the article are different. First of all, the thing Umbraco exists -- it's real, and there is a body of people interested in it and using it. Secondly, Microsoft has decided to offer this thing as part of their Web Platform Installer catalog of products (http://www.microsoft.com/Web/gallery/umbraco.aspx). Thirdly, this thing happens to rank as one of the most popular products in Microsoft's catalog (http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/featured.aspx). Fourthly, if you look at Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends?q=plone%2C+umbraco) you see Umbraco closing in on the activity level of Plone and Plone has a Wikipedia page. Fifthly, there has been some detailed research (mentioned above) that shows that Umbraco ranks in the top 20 open source CMS products in terms of market share and social media activity. Personally, I don't particularly care nor do I have any financial interest in the Umbraco page living of being deleted, but the whole discussion here irks me -- I just can't see any reasonable argument for deleting a page about a real thing referenced by multiple credible sources when there is active work going on to respond to the complaints about the page's content quality. --Bdunwood (talk) 18:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC) — Bdunwood (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Comment Unfortunately most of the above does not relate to Wikipedia's inclusion criteria at all. For example we are told "it exists- yes, it really does" (or words to that effect. However, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information about anything that exists: we require subjects to satisfy our notability criteria. Likewise "Microsoft has decided to offer this thing as part of their Web Platform Installer catalog". The fact that a particular company (even a large and prominent one) markets a product does not constitute notability: there needs to be evidence that there has been significant attention form independent observers. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:56, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I believe my previous comments have been cherry picked to build an unfair case. I think that criteria of notability is met by both the evidence of popularity in Microsoft's Web Platform Installer catalog and by the data you find in Google Trends. Can you please tell me why data from two of the largest websites on the Internet are being discounted? Are not Microsoft and Google considered reliable sources? --Bdunwood (talk) 18:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm finding it very hard to find independent sources of information about Umbraco. I did find an extensive review by an "an ethical SEO agency based in London" as well as regular coverage at CMSReport.com (group blog). Like CMSWire, these would not be my choice of sources but they are somewhat credible. It also appears to have a wide user-base including a regular conference. There are a number of consultants who'd like to install it for you as well as companies offering hosting. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 19:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The Umbraco developer community and it's owner needs to understand that popularity and downloads do not constitute a need or right to an entry on an Encyclopedia. The article is written with a bias towards figures proving worth, rather than fact or information providing insight - to the average user this is no use. Comparisons to other listings on Wikipedia is futile, the article in question is all that counts. As a suggestion - any "figures" should be removed, and be replaced with more contextual information about the product, it's architecture, what and how it solves a particular problem/need. On looking at other CMS pages on Wikipedia, perhaps reading the Drupal listing could offer some direction in where to proceed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.173.240 (talk) 22:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]


After reading the drupal article, I fail to see why the Umbraco acrticle has to go. How ever i do agree that part the section about Umbraco's top x position is kind of spammy and should be edited. Woltersw (talk) 22:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take that criticism on the chin -- not my greatest NPOV work. I've found an article that was written end of last year with more neutral ranking of the main CMS's on .net that I'll update the page with shortly. --Mardenpb1 (talk) 10:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]


I am afraid that the issue of speedy deletion has a negative effect on the article. Those like myself that think the article belongs in Wikipedia have to 1) prove Umbraco is noteworthy and 2) ensure the language and the kind of information found in the article are appropriate for an article in an encyclopedia, not some marketing brochure. When trying to prove umbraco is noteworthy, we end up trying to give figures and facts showing that it is one of the important players in the .NET CMS market. I feel a bit uncomfortable with a significant part of the article being about figures aiming to show Umbraco is a noteworthy .NET CMS. It is. We need to move on from there and concentrate on improving the article. Unfortunately, it does not feel safe to leave out such figures; we still feel that we need to show umbraco is a notable enough CMS to have an article in Wikipedia about it. To be honest, the article would be better off without some of them, but at the same time those of us that are contributing to this article would be better off, if we did not have to worry about two things at the same time. We need to finish with this speedy deletion dispute and work on the article. Once we know the article is here to stay, we may have a cooler head about deciding what facts and figures to include and which to leave out.

Miltiadis Kokkonidis (talk) 23:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]


[Note: I transferred the above three comments here from the article's discussion page.] Miltiadis Kokkonidis (talk) 08:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Three questions: 1. Should or should not Wikipedia have an article on the top 3 .NET CMSs in terms of market share, assuming the articles are of the required quality and have an encyclopedic value? 2. Is umbraco one of those top 3 .NET CMSs? 3. Is the umbraco entry and does it have an encyclopedic value? My answers are: 1) yes, 2) I believe the evidence showing it is currently the #2.NET CMS, and 3) yes. In fact, I am able to find information now in the umbraco entry that I could not easily find elsewhere. For instance, I saw elsewhere that umbraco is tied to Microsoft SQL Server and this made it to my original version of the article. This has now been corrected. I had also written that it comes under an MIT open source licence, but now the article makes a distinction between the back-end and the UI. This is the kind of accurate, referenced, up-to-date information I have grown to expect Wikipedia to provide at a glance. Miltiadis Kokkonidis (talk) 08:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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