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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, technically speaking. Actually there does appear to be a consensus here (albeit not of the standard keep/delete/merge variety) which breaks down as follows: 1) The article, and therefore the info within, should not be deleted at this time; 2) Clearly there are problems with the article, e.g. pertaining to the title, NPOV, reliability of information, etc.; 3) With respect to number two, "the issue should be resolved through the normal editing process," as Black Falcon put it. There are multiple (conflicting) ideas about how to go about number three, so that should be discussed on the article talk page. A couple days of effort there from most of the people here will probably take care of most of the concerns. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 00:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism of YouTube

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Criticism of YouTube (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Article devoted solely to the bad things about YouTube, which runs counter to our NPOV policies, as all articles must not be solely devoted to one viewpoint. This is the crux here: a valid summary style article would contain both criticism and praise of YouTube; neither is really in short supply. Unlike Social impact of YouTube, which at least tries to be neutral, this article is not, will not be, and fundamentally can not be because, as YouTube is not an artistic work in itself, the default definition of "criticism" implicitly restricts the content of the article to be negative. Additionally, the criticism itself is not notable; this is just a laundry list of poorly sourced criticisms that aren't really about YouTube, but about What People Do On The Internet That's Actually Against The Terms Of Service But News Services Be Damned To Make The Distinction (which is a problem with most "Criticism of Web 2.0 sites" article). The only section of the article that I can see containing merit is about copyright: both infringement and false claims thereof; which should be preferably split out to something like Copyright on YouTube or Copyright on the Internet. Sceptre (talk) 14:44, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep - Then why isn't Criticism of Wikipedia, Criticism of Wal-Mart, and the Criticism of the War on Terrorism deleted? This is just the strangest nomination... smithers - talk 16:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"What about article X?" is not a good argument. It's not even an argument. The odds are, they haven't been nominated for deletion. And, the truth is, even if they were nominated, they'd probably get kept because "omggz itz notabul!" And there's nothing strange about enforcing NPOV. Sceptre (talk) 16:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Article devoted solely to the bad things about YouTube..." I would never of guessed that an article titled Criticism of YouTube would only focus on the negative side of things. Lugnuts (talk) 17:15, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See, that's the point. Your statement only strengthens the rationale for deletion, as no article subject will be looked on entirely negatively. I mean, Mussolini made the trains run on time. That's one good thing about Mussolini, you see? Sceptre (talk) 17:18, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Except he didn't make them run on time... ;-) Lugnuts (talk) 18:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was actually wondering which episode it was from while I was typing it. The point is, even the most evil men in history have done something good. Hitler helped create the autobahns and the Volkswagen. Saddam Hussein had one of the most LGBT-friendly governments in the Middle East (after Israel). Hell, Mussolini did improve Italy's infrastructure. It's practically impossible for anything that exists to be viewed negatively, so criticism articles should therefore not exist for the most part. Sceptre (talk) 18:11, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The existence of a 'Criticism' article doestn' not oligical state that there are no positive aspects to the entity being criticised. Your rationale for deleetion of this article is completely flawed. Vexorg (talk) 18:17, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But by making an article about solely negative aspects, you're implying that the negative aspects are more important than the positive aspects. We are therefore not "representing all significant views fairly, proportionately, and without bias". Sceptre (talk) 18:25, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep per Smithers7 - Meta-arguing by the nominator presents no policy-based reasons for deletion, apart from citing an essay.--WaltCip (talk) 17:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, NPOV isn't a policy? When did this happen? Sceptre (talk) 17:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
NPOV doesn't apply here. This is a content fork to keep the main article from being too large.--WaltCip (talk) 17:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong. NPOV applies to every article. From Wikipedia:Content forking:

Any daughter article that deals with opinions about the subject of parent article must include suitably-weighted positive and negative opinions, and/or rebuttals, if available, and the original article should contain a neutral summary of the split article.

This article contains no positive opinions about YouTube; therefore it is not a legitimate content fork. Sceptre (talk) 17:55, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why would you expect an article called Criticism of YouTube to contain positive opinions on Youtube? That's absurd :) :) Vexorg (talk) 18:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Because it's an article. If an article cannot be neutral, it should not exist. Sceptre (talk) 18:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The article is neutral. It's neutral in portraying the criticisms of Youtube. Vexorg (talk) 18:29, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please show that criticism of YouTube is notable, then. Sceptre (talk) 18:33, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Inherently non-neutral, the same as most of the other Criticism of.... articles. CIreland (talk) 18:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep - The nominator is not understanding the NPOV policies. The NPOV policy is about the article itself and not the content of the article. If criticisms of a body or person is notable then as long as those criticisms are not portrayed in a biased way then it doesn't contravene NPOV. I agree with WaltCip Vexorg (talk) 18:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's the point: "criticism of YouTube" is not notable. This is a list of criticisms, yes, but the concept of criticism of YouTube is not notable in itself. Imagine if we listed an article called Criticism of Barack Obama (we did, briefly for about thirteen hours, last March), in a "neutral voice", all of the criticism of him for being a socialist communist fascist Muslim Kenyan who hasn't shown his birth certificate. Would that contravene NPOV? Yes. Because there's just as much praise for Obama for being a good orator, for being more down to earth, for compassion, but that wouldn't get in said article. The subject of our "Criticism of Barack Obama" article isn't the criticism itself; the subject is Obama. Now, think about YouTube: sure people are cocks on YouTube, but the website at the same time has allowed many people to get their fifteen minutes of fame, makes watching videos on the internet much easier, so where is this praise? It isn't there. Sceptre (talk) 18:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rename to "Critiques of YouTube". Then add positive critique as well. Kate (talk) 20:01, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
[1], [2] are just two of the many WP:RSs cited. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 22:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just aggregating what politicians have said in the legislature doesn't make it notable. That's one of the major functions of the news media. The concept isn't notable at all; this is just a laundry list of criticisms that are not-notable. Sceptre (talk) 23:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Show that they are not notable versus the many WP:RSs in the article. Vexorg (talk) 00:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ignoring for a second that the burden of proof is on the one seeking to include content, content is notable if:

a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject

Sources. Plural. Sceptre (talk) 00:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And there are many reliable plural sources cited in this article. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 03:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are plural sources, yes. But not plural sources for each criticism. Ergo, each criticism is non-notable. Sceptre (talk) 04:13, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Which is why they are all in one article. Each criticism has at least 5 sources, though some aren't reliable. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 17:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: As far as I can tell, the existence of "Criticism of..." sections is generally dealt with on a case by case basis: Wikipedia:Criticism, Wikipedia:Content forking, WP:CRITS etc. Most of the delete comments here appear to be about these sections in general (NPOV for example), and therefore fail to address this case specifically, as simply being a "Criticism of" section does not automatically mean the article is necessarily a candidate for deletion [3]. The article could (like any article of this type) be seen as a POV fork, but if properly dealt with (including arguments against the criticisms for example), then that in itself does not seem too problematic to me. The content on the page seems extremely well referenced, and there is far too much of it to be realistically incorporated into the Youtube article. Jhbuk (talk) 00:02, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The referencing is terrible; quite a lot of it's to blogs or YT channels/videos. The sourcing isn't the problem though; neutrality's the problem: there's no rebuttals of the criticism, except in the copyright section, and it's not really criticising the service; it's criticising the users of the service; I mean, even in the copyright section, no point is made about the fact that ten hours of video are uploaded every minute so they really can't screen content (and when TOU violations are pointed out, they're often removed quickly). Sceptre (talk) 00:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just because it might not appear particularly good now, it doesn't mean it never will be. AfD is really about whether the article could become a satisfactory article; if it could be improved to be one, without having to be fundamentally rewritten (there still seems to be a substantial amount of useable information there, and the article should therefore be salvageable) then it should surely be tagged for rescue first. Admittedly, some of the references come from fairly poor sources, but you can't ignore the newspapers and places like CNN and the BBC. I don't know enough about the topic to make a decision about completeness etc, but even if it isn't a satisfactory article now, as I mentioned, why can't an article called "Criticism of Youtube" exist, even if it may have to be different to its present form? Jhbuk (talk) 00:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the article could become satisfactory. I didn't mention the sourcing as I'm well aware that badly sourcing is not AFDable in itself. I don't think the article can ever exist because of its title: if an article is named "Criticism of X", where X is not an artistic work, then the default meaning will remove any hope of neutrality because it explicitly only focuses on the negative aspects of X while completely ignoring the positive aspects; whether the negative aspects of X outnumber the positive aspects is irrelevant, as the total set of aspects should not be split into two and one given preferential treatment. Editorial attitudes on Wikipedia also preclude any attempt of neutralising such an article—as this AfD sadly shows once again—because the "it's notable, therefore it must be covered" viewpoint (even if the "it" is not notable) and removal of positive aspects, and sometimes even rebuttals, from criticism articles is endemic. Sceptre (talk) 00:36, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can see where you're coming from (which is why I went for a comment instead of a !vote), but there is nothing I've seen in policy that absolutely forbids such articles, and as a result, we find ourselves back at smithers7's point again. This is a criticism of policy in not banning these articles more than a specific criticism of this one, as the WP' policy makers' do not appear to share the view that such articles cannot abide by NPOV, by definition. I think that you should go to the village pump. Your main criticism is about all of these articles, and it is not specific to this one. If this article is deleted, then they all should be, if this is the primary argument, unless you can make it specific to YouTube. Jhbuk (talk) 01:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is prohibited in policy under a general prohibition of content forks, here. Sceptre (talk) 01:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What about this and in particular WP:Content forking, which states that "There is currently no consensus whether a "Criticism of..." article is always a POV fork, but many criticism articles nevertheless suffer from POV problems." WP:NPOV#Point of view (POV) and content forks mentions only POV forks, but it cannot therefore automatically equate "Criticism of" articles as them, due to the WP:Content forking guideline. Jhbuk (talk) 19:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Poorly sourced in YOUR OPINION. Why are you so heavily editing an article you want deleted? Just get on with it, you seem to be on a hypnotic mission at the moment. I won't be edit warring with you while you are on your rampage. Vexorg (talk) 00:48, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Poorly sourced in any sane person's opinion. I mean, really, are websites that fully embrace trutherism and blame the Haiti earthquake on oil drilling reliable sources in anyone's book? Sceptre (talk) 00:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per above arguments. --Ixfd64 (talk) 01:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Per what arguments? The absolutely specious ones that I proverbially threw over a barrel and raped? Sceptre (talk) 01:30, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    No the arguements that are genuine and are virgins. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 03:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Just because an article is about criticism doesn't mean it's POV. We just have to show the sources in a fair light. POV would be say to say things like YouTube is Google's latest step in its quest to achieve total control of the content of the Web and destroy all of its competitors sourced to a news item that in an NPOV article would only be used to say something like Many critics of Google have pointed out that YouTube controls most of the online video industry and that Google's acquisition of it may have negative consequences for its competitors. I'd say the same thing if someone tried to delete the Nazi article by saying it was biased against Nazis. -- Soap Talk/Contributions 01:36, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    See what I said to Lugnuts: we're okay with criticism of something in an article. What we're not okay with is an article pretending that everything about the subject is bad. With your Nazi example, it's like apples and oranges: with the Nazis, we say the Nazis were bad, but in a historical voice and good quality sources that doesn't say they're outright evil; hell, the Hitler article says that for all the bad stuff he did, he at least improved German infrastructure a hell of a lot. With this article, it's gossipy, recentist, and just focuses entirely about the bad things about YouTube without ever focusing on the responses to the criticism or focusing on the good parts (except for some parts of the copyright section, which I think should be spun out once we get rid of this article). Sceptre (talk) 01:45, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sceptre above: "...it's gossipy, recentist, and just focuses entirely about the bad things about YouTube without ever focusing on the responses to the criticism...": This sounds to me like a mini-peer review pointing to areas that need improvement, rather than criteria for deletion. Sensei48 (talk) 02:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There is important information here - a very good precis of copyright issues that go far beyond YT but for which YT is the current flashpoint. It's too detailed to fold into the YT article, though it needs more sourcing. The title is problematic, IMHO, as it is for all of the other "criticism of" articles referenced above. Those titles are puerile and un-encyclopedic. This one might better be titled with ref. to YT and copyright issues, which is after all the bulk of the article. Sensei48 (talk) 01:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename and Reorganize Content. As it is right now, the article reads like a POV fork, which violates WP:NPOV. Now, this is mainly due to the last two sections. There's a trick here. If this article was specifically targetted to discussion YouTube and Copyright (including both what steps it takes including the audio forensics) and criticism of that (how to name it, I don't know), and the other sections moved back to the main article, we're removing the NPOV issue without losing coverage. But keeping those last two sections outside of the main youtube article hurts this article's viabilities. --MASEM (t) 05:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sign-up sheet:
    I can guess where this is going: people scream "has potential!" and "can be improved!" - and once the deal is over, we all go home, and nobody's gonna do anything. Please sign up below and pledge you will actually clean up this mess. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 05:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  1. TheWeakWilled (T * G)
  2. <your name>
  3. <your name>
  4. <your name>
  5. <your name>
  6. <your name>
    I do not want to sign this because it would seem to be that to do so would be to endorse the idea this article should only be kept if it is massively re-written, which is not what I mean with my !vote. I think the article is good as it is. Of course it can be improved, but my keep !vote is not contingent on any major changes to the article promised to happen in the future; nor are any of my other keep !votes on any other AfD. -- Soap Talk/Contributions 22:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
that's fine. :) I, however, do think that it needs to be completely re-written, and am curious to know who would do so before casting some sorta !vote (if at all) Here's why: I won't vote keep 'cause I not for sure that I am definitely not the one who's gonna spend any time on this, but I won't vote delete before I am certain no-one else will improve this mess. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 22:52, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but needs quite a bit of work. As stated above, many of the problems could be fixed with some work. Agree that parts of the article are rather sloppy at the moment.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • DELETE per nom, and as an uninvolved third party to countless of this kind of article, my view is that it is totally non-encyclopedic and serves no meaningful purpose, at all. Please take your time and honestly answer to the questionnaires below:

Q1: Does it actually improve Wikipedia?
A1: No.
Q2: Does it further the cause of Wikipedia being a free online Encyclopedia? (particular emphasis being on the definition of Encyclopedia!)
A2: No.
Q3: Does the existence of this article conform to the list of deleted other uncyclopedic contents such as List of cities by the sea/List of cities by the coast?
A3: Yes.
In fact, another recently deleted template suffered from the same problem → Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2009_December_30#Template:Major_cities_of_Greater_China, and was deleted after a long protracted discussion besides having too much presented "facts" from original researchers and POV pushers. But that's just my 2 cents. --Dave ♠♣♥♦1185♪♫™ 08:46, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Again, I beg to differ. Don't take it personally if I say this but here goes: "Would you care to sign yourself up on the sign-up sheet further up so that we know of the actual number of people willing to devote their own time to do whatever is required than say... just talk about it, which everybody can do." There's been a lot of cases where a lot of promises was made but no actions were undertaken to fulfilled it, here is another likely sample. Correct me if I'm wrong. --Dave ♠♣♥♦1185♪♫™ 12:40, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't come on me, I wanna know if you would commit to your words otherwise "don't write the check which you can't cash", to coin a phrase. All that I see above are so many people saying "KEEP" but none are willing to take the plunge to commit themselves to that Sign-up sheet to actually improve it or balance the criticisms aspect, which is at the centre of this AfD! Mind you, its easy to create an article on WP but how about maintaining it? Hence, my phrase above. Also, I have started tagging the article with maintenance templates and cleaning ups, what are you actually doing, if I may ask? Still want to talk? Why not silence the critics with our actions and deeds instead? Don't just say "KEEP" for the sake of saying it but what happens after that? There are some situations where you cannot have your cake and still be able to eat it, you know? And this is one of them, period. No offence to you but I don't think you can speak if you haven't taken the questionnaire I cited above. And no, I'm not mad at anyone... just annoyed that there can be irresponsible people who go on doing such things and yet, not even batting an eyelid or think anything of it. --Dave ♠♣♥♦1185♪♫™ 14:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Dave, as stated before, Wikipedia debates are not political campaigns. It is a common feature of political campaigns for one of the candidates to hold up a document and say "Would you care to sign this?" I am quite happy to spend some time on a cleanup of Criticism of YouTube. Let's stay on topic here.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 14:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Why don't we just incubate this article? It would get it out of the mainspace, and would allow people to work on it if they wanted, but it couldn't cause any harm. If nobody worked on it, so what? We haven't lost anything, and there is still a lot of useful information there that could at least be partially incorporated into YouTube related articles. Jhbuk (talk) 19:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note I went through to article and (took me an hour) sourced the majority of the article, but didn't get to the last section. Most of the sources listed are reliable. TheWeakWilled (T * G) 19:20, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do not delete (note that this is not the same as "keep"). I agree with most of what the nominator writes, including the main point that we should not have an article devoted solely to criticisms of YouTube. However, in this case, I believe that the issue should be resolved through the normal editing process (i.e., split or merge appropriate content into other articles, then convert this article into a redirect) since there is valid content and information contained in the article. –Black Falcon (talk) 21:50, 7 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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