Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/8 1/2 by Eleven

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 on a Deletion review nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was ambiguous.

I have discounted the opinion of one "voter" whose contributions so far have almost exclusively been to AFD discussions and VfU discussions. I continue to find it improbable that a new user will so quickly find AFD and consider it more likely than not that this may be evidence of sockpuppetry.

The author of the webcomic raised several arguments in favor of the article but failed to persuade the other participants in the discussion. While the Alexa rank was not reported in this debate, my own research shows it to be very high. See here.

I am going to call this one as a "delete" decision but without prejudice against recreation if/when the webcomic achieves the recommended level of notability. Rossami (talk) 16:29, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

None notable webcomic, probably made in violation of WP:POINT by Jamie McGarry after a rather bitter afd debate at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Able_and_Baker. The author of the webcomic is User:Tedzsee and participated in that debate, please take a look at the comments made. The article states no assertion of notability and google also gives hardly any relevent links to "8 1/2 by eleven", certainly no valid notability claims. - Hahnchen 17:05, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just a comment... I agree with you that this comic is not particularly notable, unless you're looking at Alexa rankings as the only sign of notability (which is a big if, given past votes in this community). However, one thing I'd like to point out is the following (and keep it in mind that I am not asking this in a confrontational way, despite the tone of the question... I am simply curious): since when are articles supposed to establish or prove notability? Articles should document a notable subject, but they should not exist simply to prove that subject is notable. Check out this particularly pathetic webcomics stub for example. Now, I think this comic is notable, but the article certainly doesn't do a very good job "establishing" it. Should the stub be deleted just because of that? No. The article should be left and added to over time. Anyways, just a thought. I'd be interested in your response if you want to reply on my talk page or here (although here might clutter up the AfD a bit). --Tedzsee 06:44, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Abstain: seems to be somewhat popular but may not be notable. File:Smilie.gifMolotov File:Caranimationforvmolotov.gif (talk)
  
• Delete possibly redirect to paper as it's a standard US paper size. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:45, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Abstain:

Hey Hahnchen! Just wandering around the deletion pages and noticed my comic was up for deletion. I didn't know an article had been created about my comic at all. As it's my comic, I'm not going to vote or defend it vehemenently. I will, however, make the following points for others to consider. Please note that these points will argue both for and against the notability of this comic:

1. arguing that this comic is notable: The assertion by the nominator that Google does not give any relevant links to "8 1/2 by Eleven" is incorrect. The first hit on a Google search for "8 1/2 by Eleven" results in this comic appearing, a search for "8 1/2 by Eleven comic" shows several pages of relevant hits, and a search for "Lucas Teodoro da Silva" (in quote marks) returns three pages of links about this author. The search "8 1/2 x 11" points to the US standard paper size.
2. arguing that this comic is notable: the Alexa rating for this site is 346,728. While this is below WP:COMIC's required rating of 200,000, it is better than recently deleted comics like Able and Baker (Alexa:1,117,031) and Built for Comfort (Alexa:2,235,134) by a significant margin.
3. arguing that this comic is notable: The author of this comic, Lucas TdS, is one of the administrators of Comixpedia.org, a growing online resource about webcomics. This site does have the an Alexa rating of better than 200,000.
4. arguing that this comic is not notable': The article does seem to have been created in response to a sarcastic comment I made in a deletion debate arguing that it would be difficult to delete this article based on this comic's popularity. The creation of this article probably violates WP:POINT. Please note, however, that I had nothing to do with the creation of this article by its said author and did not instigate its creation on purpose!!!
5. arguing that this comic is notable: Comic has a deep archive (219 strips) and a year-and-a-half publishing steady 5 days a week (it has not missed a day).
6. arguing that this comic is not notable: Molotov's assertion is probably the closest to fact -- the comic is popular in terms of raw readership numbers and Alexa numbers (more popular than some other Wikipedia-documented webcomics, but is not mentioned by any comic critique sites, probably because of its relative newness to the comic scene (only a year in print). However, this would suggest a lack of notability within the webcomics community, despite its relatively high readership numbers on the net itself.
7. General Comment regarding the idea to redirect to US standard paper size. As the comic title is written out half in numerical (8 1/2) and half in regular english (eleven). I would suggest that a redirect for this article to the article on US standard papersize is a bad idea for two reasons:

• If someone came here looking for the comic and was redirected to the article on paper size, they may get confused.
• No one is going to type in "8 1/2 by Eleven" when they are looking for "8 1/2 x 11"... would you suggest we create a redirect for "Eight and a half by Eleven?" No.
• At some point in the future, this comic may gain notability. Its readership numbers and Alexa ranking are already almost high enough to warrant a Wikipedia entry. At that point, having a redirect would be terribly inconvenient and confusing.

1. General Comment regarding the article itself: except for the picture, this article is a copy of an article found at [1], which may be a more appropriate venue for such an article.
2. General Comment regarding the assertion that the article not giving links to the website is grounds for deletion: obviously the article would need to be improved if that was the case, however that hardly qualifies as a reason for deltion.

--Tedzsee 21:43, 15 October 2005 (UTC) I've deleted a few of my comments because I figure that if I say I'm going to stay out of the debate, I should actually not comment any further. You can look at the history if you REALLY want to see what I wrote. --Tedzsee 17:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Tedzsee: "However, this would suggest a lack of notability within the webcomics community, despite its relatively high readership numbers on the net itself." This, I believe, is the key thing here -- it just hasn't made enough of an impact (not yet, anyway; obviously, I have nothing but good wishes on that front). Delete. -- Captain Disdain 00:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The above comments seem to indicate that the comic is an up and comer on the webcomic scene. The article is factually sound and I am normally reluctant to vote delete on articles where notability is arguable. I agree with Tedzsee above that it is not the job of an article to prove notability; however, it is the job of supporters in an afd debate to do so. As such, Iwould like to see the arguments of an objective party for the notability of the subject. Until then, I, personally, can reach no decision. Cool3 20:19, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep OK, I know I'm not neutral. This one's going quite well though, so I thought I'd better show my face! The fact is, there's no guidlines for webcomics on wiki other than Alexa, so this should probably be kept. -- Hijamiefans

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.