Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Videosmarts (2nd 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. Spartaz ^Humbug! 02:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Videosmarts

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Unlike Sesame Street, which is well-known, this is not. Georgia guy (talk) 22:54, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Last time it was flagged for rescue. I don't think it did much, and it's been brought back here. If it can't be sufficiently rescued, I vote delete. NOTE: the page was suggested to merge into another one that was deleted or non-existent. I have removed it from the article; if this is actually the case, we're trying to merge it to a new article, feel free to revert that. CycloneGU (talk) 23:24, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- That was the case; the article was not deleted as it was never created. As Marasmusine mentions, a company article would best serve this subject if it is notable, especially given the similarity to the similarly poorly referenced ComputerSmarts. —Ost (talk) 16:58, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Neither the alleged failure of the rescue team nor the general apathy of editors at large to improve the article has any bearing on the topic's notability, verifiability, or its capacity to be expanded. The article meets all the thresholds for inclusion and it doesn't even list all RSes that cover it. -Thibbs (talk) 13:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because the notability of Sesame Street is irrelevant to this subject, which isn't even a television show. (Also, I have added a couple of references.) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - lots of google hits,mostly along the lines of "remember Videosmarts?". There are four references links, but they are to paid archive sites, and the abstracts indicate they are more about availability and not notability.Seaphoto ^Talk 02:03, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game related deletion discussions. (G·N·B·S·RS·Talk) MrKIA11 (talk) 17:25, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have to agree - If I have to judge the Chicago Tribune articles on abstract alone, they would seem to be based on press releases. This is the kind of subject that should be covered in an article on the company. Alas, I could not immediately find any sources on Connor Toy Company that could be used to start an article. Marasmusine (talk) 17:53, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from the at times promotional tone of the articles, I don't see any evidence that they are any more based on press releases than similar articles. Most of them contain qualifying language such as "parents may be interested" and "Videosmarts tries to turn a VHS VCR into." That doesn't sound like typical press release language. Each article lists a serious journalist as an author and because the news agencies are reputable sources, the presumption should be that that these journalists have maintained their journalistic integrity. Usually press releases are identified as such, however here we find no such identification in any of the sources. Because there is no claim made by the sources that the articles are based on press releases, and because such a practice is atypical for reputable newspapers, this judgment call essentially amounts to original research. -Thibbs (talk) 15:43, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Fails WP:V. I'll admit that I'm suspicious of pay-to-view references; if there are so many of them, it stands to reason that we should have some free references as well. I'll gladly change my mind if someone can turn up some actual sources to read. Wyatt Riot (talk) 12:49, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Those are actual sources. See WP:PAYWALL. -Thibbs (talk) 12:59, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - A historically important example of the calculator-based edutainment branch taken by developers early in the timeline of video game consoles. Sources provided in the article demonstrate notability. The article could most likely be expanded using the slew of RS articles listed in the "External Links" section or in the several more that can be found online and in print. The unit may never have achieved much commercial success because let's face it, educational games aimed at children are terribly boring, but products like this are the forerunners of the educational game genre. Sure, popular gaming magazines won't have covered the system but popular gaming magazines are advertisement- and subscription-based. Wikipedia is neither. The system is old enough that this is obviously not simply cloaked promotional material. Excising such an article hurts Wikipedia more than it helps since it reduces its scope of coverage to popular and commercially successful games instead of historically relevant and objectively notable ones. -Thibbs (talk) 12:59, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Baseball Watcher 22:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: Thibbs' assertion that this is a "historically important example" etc is interesting and all, but it remains the assertion of an editor, as opposed to one made by multiple reliable sources. He is not the first, of course, to advocate the curious notion that subjects lacking adequate sourcing should receive free passes nonetheless because of their "relevance" or "importance." Unfortunately for the premise, WP:V remains the fundamental core policy of this encyclopedia. The response to a lack of reliable sources is not to wave off WP:V; it is, in the blunt phrasing of WP:IRS, "If a topic has no reliable sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." Ravenswing 02:05, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Am I missing something here? Are the existing sources which are already linked within the article really that bad? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:11, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Reply: I agree with the editors above who believe that they're copies or rewrites of press releases. Tellingly, some of the same adulatory language and sentences appear in several, and a couple are about the same two products released by the same two separate companies. Ravenswing 14:05, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Would you mind giving some examples of the identical sentences you have discovered? I haven't located any myself. -Thibbs (talk) 15:43, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - OK I see what you mean. I thought you were talking only about the Chicago Tribune's articles. Indeed there is some similar language between one of the Chicago Tribune's articles and the Philadelphia Inquirer article, however I'm still not sure that this proves them to be based solely on press releases. I notice that the Associated Press has covered the VideoSmarts system and I know both the Chicago Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer to be members of that cooperative. I'd say an AP article is just as likely to be the originating source as a press release. Neither newspaper claims an originating source so we'd just be speculating at this point. -Thibbs (talk) 20:14, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        After looking at the Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer articles together, it appeared that this must have been a syndicated article that both newspapers happened to pick up. (The Tribune article's byline identifies the author as being from Knight-Ridder Newspapers, which indicates that the Tribune must have picked up the article from that service. The Inquirer, meanwhile, was owned by Knight-Ridder at the time.) I wouldn't assume that the article was based on press releases, though, given that it was about two different products from two separate companies. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- No you're not missing anything, Metropolitan90. The above argument is repudiated in full by the existence of multiple reliable sources in the article - a fact that would have been appreciated had even a perfunctory examination of the article been attempted. Ravensclaw, AfD is not your personal forum for practicing snide ad hominem invective. Your comments here are extremely childish and their apparent basis in fantasy gravely undermines the rhetorical effectiveness of your strawman argument. This behavior does you absolutely no credit. -Thibbs (talk) 13:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The nominator's rationale for deletion is fatally flawed. An unsupported claim that the article's topic is "not well-known" is a clear appeal to WP:IDONTKNOWIT. -Thibbs (talk) 13:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Reply: I'd read through the links before making my earlier comment, thanks; you're also not the first person at AfD to jump to the presumption that failure to agree with your position equates with failure to have reviewed the evidence. Secondly, as far as "unsupported claims" go, given that your Keep argument is an unsupported claim of this product's historical significance, I would have myself hesitated to raise that point. That being said, it's regrettable how quickly you descended to invective and personal attack. A dose of WP:CIVIL would do you good. Ravenswing 14:05, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm stunned by your hypocrisy, Ravenswing. Please cease addressing me as a contributor and try to focus on the content. If you'd like you might begin by re-reading my keep vote carefully. The second and third sentences are not unsupported claims and in order to highlight them so that future editors might not be as easily confused I have put them in italics now. The remainder of my comment might be synthesis but it's certainly not unsupported. Luckily, it doesn't appear in the article so calling it into question is quite moot to the undeniable issue that the nom's argument is invalid. -Thibbs (talk) 14:38, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Merge, along with ComputerSmarts, to Connor Toy Corporation. Verification is not so much a problem here, but I find the coverage to be not quite significant enough for WP:N. However, I will err on the side of "keep" with a combined article per WP:PRODUCT. Marasmusine (talk) 17:44, 2 May 2011 (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.