Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Web life

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 merge to Web science as an WP:ATD. (non-admin closure) ASTIG️🙃 _{(ICE-T • ICE CUBE)} 07:30, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Web life[edit]

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Web life is a concept, that proposes that the World Wide Web (Web) has, or could, evolve into an entity worthy of consideration as a life form in its own right...

This is not a mainstream theory. There was one book proposing this theory published in 2007. The other sources cited in the article are unrelated. Sean Brunnock (talk) 12:26, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 12:27, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This doesn't appear to be an established concept, but rather a proposed viewpoint that hasn't garnered significant notability. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 19:51, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - It is indeed not an established theory, but that's not quite enough to justify deleting the article. Dick (2010), Web Science and society: Towards a theoretical foundation for an emerging field of study notes that Tetlow's idea was attacked by Tim Berners-Lee in the context of establishing the Web Science Research Initiative. So it's possible that the idea might be encyclopedic or that there is a reasonable merge target for at least some of the material. I'll look into this. — Charles Stewart (talk) 20:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Web science. While I don't think there's the SIGCOV to support a decent independent article, Tetlow's proposal of web life was made in the context of a reasonably visible and influential contribution at around the time that the WSRI was being established. We could reasonably incorporate this material into the article, split between new sections on the history of the subject and the web life proposal proper. — Charles Stewart (talk) 09:27, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - If Brunnock's claim that the article is documenting unrelated contributions, that would argue against my merge proposal and suggest we should do a TNT delete of this material on SYNTH grounds. However, Tetlow cites Capra in his 2009 Investigations into Web science and the concept of Web life and Capra's ideas are obviously in tune with Telows. (The citation of Nitja is an aside which I didn't look into). It's also true that web life is a fairly kooky-sounding proposal which might give grounds for WP:DUE concern about the fit of the two materials. But web science generally is home to a lot of kook-adjacent material: I'm inclined to think we just merge it and DUE-ness can be recovered by pruning. — Charles Stewart (talk) 09:27, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Capra's Web of Life was written in 1996 and makes no mention of the World Wide Web or the Internet. It even says at the top of Web life, Not to be confused with Web of life. — Sean Brunnock (talk) 11:06, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, Capra's work does not count as SIGCOV for the idea since it is not documenting the topic of the article, but a merge does not need the existence of SIGCOV, only that the content is encyclopedic. I was arguing against a potential objection to the merge on the grounds that Capra's work is irrelevant and perhaps SYNTH. What do you think of the idea of merging? — Charles Stewart (talk) 11:20, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Against. If the book is not notable, then the book's thesis is not notable as well. — Sean Brunnock (talk) 11:49, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is a misapplication of our notability guidelines, which says when a topic deserves a standalone article. I agree that it does not. It does not say whether material has a place in Wikipedia, which is a matter of other content policies, such as verifiability, WP:DUE and WP:SYNTH. I don't see that you have shown this, hence my merge opinion. — Charles Stewart (talk) 13:16, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 18:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 19:30, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This is still going on? Folks, not only is this article not notable, it violates WP:FRINGE- Wikipedia is not and must not become the validating source for non-significant subjects. Please delete. Thank you. — Sean Brunnock (talk) 21:38, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Fringe speculation that we have no reason to cover. Merging any of the content elsewhere would just preserve the silliness. XOR'easter (talk) 23:50, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - That sentence from FRINGE seems to be misunderstood: it states a reason why it is important that we follow our policies on verifiability and neutrality; it does not say what fringe science consists of or how we should handle material that does not deserve its own page. For that, the guidance is "Ideas that are of borderline or minimal notability may be mentioned in Wikipedia, but should not be given undue weight". Merging seems to me an opportunity to improve the web science article: while the web life hypothesis has not seen significant uptake, the broader class to which it belongs, that the web has significant emergent properties, was an important idea at the time the discipline of web science was taking form and still sees continued development. A merge outcome is not promoting the work of a kook: Tetlow is a respectable member of the web science community, one of the first distinguished lecturers at the Web Science Institute, one of the two founding departments of the Web Science Trust research network [1], and Tetlow's book saw substantial comment in the early days when the scope of web science was being established. — Charles Stewart (talk) 10:35, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Linus Pauling was a Nobel Laureate. By your reasoning, the AIDS article should point out that Vitamin C can cure AIDS. [2] Sean Brunnock (talk) 11:19, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This insinuation misrepresents what I said and is beneath you. Wikipedia's content needs to be verifiable and our coverage of topics needs to be neutral. Deletion policy is a crude tool in pursuit of these ends: while not having articles on topics we cannot properly cover does help us, deleting reliably sourced content that is relevant to topics we can adequately cover generally does not. We do cover Pauling's fringe views on vitamin C and we do so through enforcement of our policies in regular editing, not deletion policy. — Charles Stewart (talk) 13:00, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete on account of lack of independent notability. Then, merge into Web science selectively some material that can be salvaged. This proposal can be accused of erring on the side of generosity. -The Gnome (talk) 20:35, 12 April 2022 (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.