Wikipedia

psychobunny

Yeah. I'd have to agree. I was disappointed that it ended up this way though, with a seemingly bitter taste for all parties involved.

TiaZzz

While I see why the article could be deleted for valid reasons, most of the discussion in the AfD (look at me tossing WP lingo around!) was cherrypicking. Poor language or poor phrasing shouldn't result in deletion, it should result in editing or requests for citations. Most of the noise was because of sources and no matter how much one cited WP:NSOFT, people ignored it. WP now has so many various guidelines, rules and essays delving into facets that cherrypicking whatever fits your stance is bound to be a problem. I tried to argue that a more specific essay - one that is specific for software - is in contrast with the more general guideline, but not no avail.

I have little actual interest in nodeBB. I'm not even running it. I still think that this little exercise showed some interesting tendencies in the WP community. It's seemingly "cool" to stomp in on an AfD, toss off a one-liner to seem clever and then furiously defend the initial stance when confronted with it. Given the forrest of rules and guidelines, this is quite doable. Sow doubt is seemingly a valid technique no matter if you can back it up. I take offence by that. If WP demands sources to be found and said sources is lined up according to the rules (for instance searching Google News), any dismissal of said sources needs to be backed up. Unsupported claims that the source is so-and-so is just noise.

I love WP but I don't really like the subculture of some wikipedians.

Henry Wright

Maybe the NodeBB guys should commission a seasoned Wikipedia article writer to get the job done properly?

TiaZzz

That will end with the same result as long as the sources found for nodeBB are the same; like I said, the main objection were notability. No word wizardry will fix that.

People should help spread the word and get coverage for nodeBB. That will help the cause.

rbeer

@TiaZzz
That's good to know, thank you! But this also means that paying 20 publishers around the world to have an article in their magazines would generate said citations and therefore solve the problem? Well, that feels awkard to me; I think I'm beginning to get your point.
Still, proper wording seems to be important, too. It was one of his points. Everyone simply forgot about it in the following discussion.

The discussion on the deletion struck me as being somewhat off the point. Anyways, I myself decided to see Yannick's (he is the one who tagged the article for deletion, isn't he?) as constructive criticism and now try to act upon it. Even if we took the worst case scenario of himself being biased and therefore wanting to delete the article (which I don't), the only way to solve that would be to fulfill his requests up until insinuated bias would become apparent to everyone else. But I (maybe naively) think this won't happen.

My final suggestion then, which I will follow myself, is the same as yours; to go outside and make NodeBB notable. There are tons of free magazines handling open source topics, for example. Many of them rely on articles written by volunteers. I bet those would gladly print an essay about NodeBB. Or speak at one of the many JS, Node.js related meetups around the world. (Linking this here, because I love the irony of the next 2 Berlin meetups taking place in the Wikimedia building. )

Discussing things into oblivion, instead of acting upon criticism is also a negative trend on the internet, imo. While for some WP articles there might be no other choice than arguing, this isn't the case here. We are in the best position to eradicate the notability claim. We just have to do it.

Yannick

Well then, first of all, I would like to point out that I've got nothing against Node.js nor NodeBB as some people like to claim here. I've been a Wikipedia editor for quiet some time and I've been keeping an eye on the "Comparison of Internet Forum Software"-page for quiet a while. Moreover, NodeBB has been removed from the list - by me and others - multiple times already. But this forum software isn't the only one, there have been plenty more:

And the mother of clean-ups:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software&type=revision&diff=645137567&oldid=645136074

Anyway, for all of these changes and the many ohters besides them, it has been said in the edit description that redlinks are not allowed to be listed ("redlinks" or "[[WP:WTAF]]" refer to that). Additionally, this was - and still is - noted at the top of the article:

This is a list of NOTABLE internet forum software, as judged by Wikipedia's notability policies, obtained by searching Wikipedia for WP:N. Please don't add external links or wikilinks to nonexistent articles – instead, read our notability policies and write the article first, ensuring to demonstrate notability. Entries without articles, redlinks, external links, and links to articles that aren't about the forum software in question will be pruned periodically. Fill in the background info too, please, to make this article useful.

Which is another warning to not add in red links. However, while warned at multiple points in time, people from this community continued to redo revisions that where previously undone because they violated the WP rules. And while it is indeed true that most of Wikipedia's rules odd, some impossible to follow without breaking others and are just written down way to long, I think the "red link" one here is easy to understand. And you know, if that was addressed right from the start, nothing would have happened, heck, I would have added you guys back myself (as I browse Wikipedia to find out for myself if there are articles for forum software that are not jet listed on that page).

However, starting an edit war after being warned so many times should have ringed a bell that it might have been the wrong to go over it. And lets be honest here, does anyone here think these sentences should be on Wikipedia:

modern platform that will hopefully help shape forums of the future
Unlike competing forum software offerings
will soon allow integration with services such as WrapBootstrap

It wasn't the way that the article was written that made me decide to request deletion (as I first added templates to request improvements to the article for third party sources and a NPoV). I honestly didn't want to fill in a deletion request (because that too is actualy quiet complex to do, everything is complex to do on Wikipedia for that matter). You want to know what ultimately made me decide to delete this article? Well, it was the content in this very topic. I'm fine with a single user or 2 undoing my changes because they believe these changes where good and done with good faith.

What the mistake here was is thinking that WP editors don't do any research before adding templates like the third party sources and NPoV (well, not everyone does that, but I do). I did and doing so ingored the main website and decided to add these templates based on my findings, because I believed that the article could be improved. The issue is, after doing so, I stopped ignoring the main website and stumbled upon this topic only to find out that the edit war was being "fought" intentionaly by this community.

But again, I hope you guys don't take this personal, I remove any entry from that list that doesn't fit the rules of that article itself, not just NodeBB.

@ApfelUser said:

I added NodeBB to the Wikipedia site "Comparison of Internet forum software", that might be a first step to get a whole own page too. Let's see if they accept it, but I don't see any reason why they shouldn't. You can go here for the history, and click "thank" and maybe also write on the "talk" page. That way they see that people are interested in it.

And see, this is kinda where it all goes wrong. Adding to the Comparison of Internet forum software-page isn't the first step (as I've mention earlier), it's the final step.

@TiaZzz said:

If there is an "edit war", there need to be at least 2 persons involved. @YannickFran was one of them himself and actually started the "war" with this sentence to his deletion: "(Bye again!)". @YannickFran is wrong if he thinks that this is going to make us think that his contribution is legit. I myself thought that he just didn't like nodeBB and deleted it therefor. In general I understand that it wasn't okay to start this edit war, but the sentence to the first deletion was a bit misleading in my opinion.

That "Bye again" refered to the many deletions of NodeBB prior to that revision to the article. The article itself clearly states that added entries should have a page, not to mention that the revision list of that article is full of [[WP:WTAF]]'s which should have given an additional clue. Further, I've mentioned more then once to read the guidelines to add new entries to the article and refered to WP:WTAF. In fact, take a look at the "mother of all clean-ups", this cleanup included the deletion of NodeBB yet 4 days later it was there again (and it got deleted thereafter once more). One would think that 3 times (it might be more in fact, I didn't check the whole history) would be enough.

Further, because I made the first revert doesn't make me the one who started the edit war. As I've noted many times by now: the additions made where in violation of the Wikipedia guidelines and where uniform with prior reverts for the same reason without any bias. As long as that's the case, it's not an edit war on my part. And that was exactly the case.

And to make things even worse, this is another great way to make WP editors doubt your intentions:

@TiaZzz said:

Now can we move on instead of this deletion war? I'm not part of this community. I just reacted after finding nodeBB long after looking at the comparison and having missed it there.

Yet here you are, and before this whole debacle began. Editors don't like it when you lie in discussions like that. Especially as this topic was mentioned in the opening of the argument as one of the reasons for deletion.

So, there you have it, now you know why all of this happened. It was nothing personal nor preference for anything. Just me and the other editors following the Wikipedia guidelines. And yes, they can be rediculous. But they are the guidelines, and until someone decides to change them, they have to be followed.

Anyway, have a nice day.

Bri

Hey @Yannick thank you for weighing in here with a well thought out response.

Obviously a lot of us here consider NodeBB to be "notable" although it apparently doesn't line up with WP's notion of notable. To that point, our notion of notability probably stems from the fact that all of us here are in love with the platform and, therefore, are passionate about its inclusion, which then manifests in wars like what happened. Apologies for that, hopefully we can all rise above what happened and work out a clear path to this software's inclusion on that page.

TiaZzz

@Yannick said:

@TiaZzz said:

If there is an "edit war", there need to be at least 2 persons involved. @YannickFran was one of them himself and actually started the "war" with this sentence to his deletion: "(Bye again!)". @YannickFran is wrong if he thinks that this is going to make us think that his contribution is legit. I myself thought that he just didn't like nodeBB and deleted it therefor. In general I understand that it wasn't okay to start this edit war, but the sentence to the first deletion was a bit misleading in my opinion.

That "Bye again" refered to the many deletions of NodeBB prior to that revision to the article. The article itself clearly states that added entries should have a page, not to mention that the revision list of that article is full of WTAF's which should have given an additional clue. Further, I've mentioned more then once to read the guidelines to add new entries to the article and refered to WP:WTAF. In fact, take a look at the "mother of all clean-ups", this cleanup included the deletion of NodeBB yet 4 days later it was there again (and it got deleted thereafter once more). One would think that 3 times (it might be more in fact, I didn't check the whole history) would be enough.

The quote isn't by me. I make no claim for "us" as I will explain later on.

@TiaZzz said:

Now can we move on instead of this deletion war? I'm not part of this community. I just reacted after finding nodeBB long after looking at the comparison and having missed it there.

Yet here you are, and before this whole debacle began. Editors don't like it when you lie in discussions like that. Especially as this topic was mentioned in the opening of the argument as one of the reasons for deletion.

Here I am. I still stand by my claim. If you look at my profile you'll see that I joined not long ago and my posts are fairly random. I have users on other forums as well and I don't identify with them either. I don't develop nodeBB nor do I run it.; that may change as I plan to test nodeBB but now I just window shop, so to speak. All I wrote is true and my motivation for getting nodeBB included still stands. I have a WP user as well and I don't claim to be a part of the WP community. Registered user means "may or may not be part of the community", it's as simple as that.

I agree that the phrases you selected from the article are poorly worded. I still think that deletion is a knee-jerk reaction when editing could have avoided the sales pitch. I "fought" in the talk section because I don't think WP editors did a very good job researching. I did the the suggested steps in WP:NSOFT, looked up and cited sources from Google News, cited the suggested lenience for sources for FOSS, explained how nodeBB stands out in the crowd and most of it was promptly ignored. Sure, WP:NSOFT is just an essay but it aim to help in situations just like the AfD for nodeBB:

This advice is not a formal Wikipedia policy or guideline, and it may not provide valid criteria for an AfD nomination. However, it may be consulted for assistance during an AfD discussion or when considering creating a standalone article.

If WP:NSOFT can't be used in an AfD like it suggests, it should be removed.

Sylwester Cyba

@Yannick said:

And the mother of clean-ups:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software&type=revision&diff=645137567&oldid=645136074

Wikipedia should stop asking for donations and 1% from income tax here in my country.

You have posted a link where a lot of my additions were deleted. I have spent HOURS to update many comparisons available on the Wikipedia. Mainly updating software versions from time to time. I have stopped doing that after seeing 100 page watchers (View history > Number of watchers) and bots ONLY deleting changes.

And I am forum software contributor and insider since the year 2001.

julian

@nhl.pl What would we do without you? Your reports add a level of polish to NodeBB

We'll be on Wikipedia one day. There's no need to force it. Slow and steady

a_5mith

Bit hard to write about forum software when you know nothing about it. Only people that know the ins and outs of nodebb are the developers and people on this forum. But as it seems any member of nodebb can't write the article. It won't get written.

I can see the points about aspirational expectations being an issue though. They're not facts.

psychobunny

Im going to lock this thread because I don't want to keep beating this with a stick. I think most of the posters here have valid points, but replying here won't change much.

Let's just focus on being notable We've got a few big corporations (ex. adultswim and others) that are using it, so echoing @julian, one step at a time