Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virtual Museum of Computing

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. Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 12:21, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Virtual Museum of Computing

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Page is purely promotional, does not meet WP:GNG. Written by founder so violates WP:COI. Questionable 'official website'. Hadal1337 (talk) 07:25, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Website is questionable and the most recent article there was created in March 2022. I looked around and found one article about a different Virtual Museum of Computing but couldn't find anything about this one that was of note. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 08:29, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 10:23, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – VMoC is notable as one of the first virtual museums in the 1990s and was supported by the International Council of Museums. The article has been in existence since 2005 and no {{notability}} notice has been posted. Many of the references to VMoC are from 1990s websites and are not necessarily on the web today. —Jonathan Bowen (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
1) In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_museum#Online_pioneers_(web-based_sites_established_before_2000) , the the reference to your statement ("one of the first virtual museums"), is on a website/article written by you. Also cannot find any source regarding the support by International Council of Museums.

2) The article has been in existence since 2005, but with an daily median page view of 5 in the last 90 days. How could a notability notice have been posted if so little people view the article to begin with? Hadal1337 (talk) 17:58, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- ICOM has "more than 40,000 members from 141 countries and territories" which does not confer notability in any way. It's also a professional network museums apply to, not recognition that is granted in the general sense. "ICOM is a unique professional network of institutions and museum professionals that will open new opportunities for you." This is not an indicator of notability. Star Mississippi 14:07, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep looks like a well referenced article Inwind (talk) 13:30, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please elaborate on how it's well referenced? Hadal1337 (talk) 18:05, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Question would the appropriate notability be Web or Org as it's not a physical museum? Star Mississippi 14:08, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are you referring to the official website? It's a Fandom hosted website, it doesn't even have its own domain. Hadal1337 (talk) 15:01, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To the whole project. A physical museum would need to meet WP:ORG, a website, N:WEB. I don't particularly care who the host of the website is. Star Mississippi 15:20, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I'm not too sure. I just know it does not meet WP:GNG Hadal1337 (talk) 15:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Some further discussion may be useful here. Especially whether the article satisfies WP:WEBCRIT
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, TigerShark (talk) 21:26, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The only in-depth sources available are by Bowen, the founder of the site. The fact that it has finished up on Fandom as its official site says all we need to know about why it should be deleted here. SpinningSpark 11:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete seems to be a COI/promotional and lacks notability. Andrevan@ 22:28, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:03, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: The subject of this article is of historical rather than current interest. Some sample independent references:

Lee, J.A.N. (2004). History of Computing in Education. In: Impagliazzo, J., Lee, J.A.N. (eds) History of Computing in Education. 2004. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 145. Springer, New York, NY. doi:10.1007/1-4020-8136-7_1
Leslie, Mitch (September 14, 2001). Memory lane. Science; Washington, vol 293, issue 5537.

Some sample historical references:

Reviewed by Lycos as a top 5% Web site.
Recommended by the Discovery Channel in A History of the Internet, 1995.
Planet Science Site of the Day, 21 October 1996.
Best Site Award from Bookmark Central, January 1998.
Reviewed by Science NetLinks, May 1998.
5 star site under Computing Milieux from Anbar Electronic Intelligence, January 1999.
Site of the Day in RedOrbit.

—Jonathan Bowen (talk) 15:46, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1) VMoC has a 3 sentence coverage in the whole book/article.

2) Cannot find this book, please provide ISBN.

3) No reference for Lycos.

4) Not able to find anything on Google, please point me in the right direction.

5) Planet Science Site of the Day brings no result on Google.

6) Cannot find a website called Bookmark Central on Google.

7) Science NetLinks is down.

8) No results on Google regarding Computing Milieux from Anbar Electronic Intelligence.

9) Not able to find anything regarding 'Site of the Day' from RedOrbit. Hadal1337 (talk) 16:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

#2 is not a book, it's a journal article [1]. It has fairly trivial coverage. SpinningSpark 17:25, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

#6 (Bookmark Central) I think is defunct, but this would indicate that it was user generated content so useless for establishing notability. SpinningSpark 19:10, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The 1990s references were on the web in the 1990s, not now. A web archive resource like Archive.org may find them. This resource was notable for its existence mainly in the 1990s rather than now. WP:WEB applies but in a 1990s context. The resource was announced in 1995 (see announcement on Google Groups). It was highly referenced in past books (see list of books under Google Books). See under WP:GOOGLETEST: "Multiple hits on an exact phrase in Google Book search provide convincing evidence for the real use of the phrase or concept." I believe that this applies here. —Jonathan Bowen (talk) 14:25, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are misreading GOOGLETEST. A large number of ghits suggests that something might be notable, but one still needs to find sources in amongst those results that support WP:GNG. Being cited by a book is not evidence of notability, it's just a passing mention. It is not the in-depth discussion required by GNG. You claim that the site was notable in the 1990s, but that claim needs to be verifiable now. All the sources that we can access now are passing or trivial mentions. 1990s sources are still good now if they were reliable, but if they were never archived anywhere or print copies exist, then it is impossible to verify even in principle. We don't necessarily need to be able to access sources online, but it needs to be possible to access them somehow so we can prove that there is indeed in-depth discussion there or to resolve any dispute over the facts the source is supposed to be a cite for. SpinningSpark 11:47, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

#7 Science Netlinks has been heavily archived by the Wayback Machine, but finding the original article, if it is there at all, is a nightmare without the exact url. SpinningSpark 11:55, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine is not very comprehensive for 1990s web material, with mainly top-level pages archived. With the peer-reviewed papers and many book references, is not there a case to Merge the article under WP:AFDR at least? —Jonathan Bowen (talk) 14:26, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you click on the "From" column to sort the results by date, you will see the WBM was archiving this site from 1998, the date of the review. Many review pages were archived from an early date, not just top-level pages. The page in question does not seem to have been archived in 1998, but it could have been archived in any of the subsequent years the site was up in the 2000s. I had a good try at finding it, but I'm not going to go through thousands of results only to find it is another passing mention. That's for you to do if you think this is a worthwhile source. What merge target are you suggesting? The museum is already mentioned in the Bowen article, any more would probably be WP:UNDUE. SpinningSpark 15:07, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your efforts, I have looked too, but cannot find the review archived. I understand that the Wayback Machine only searches to a certain level of links, at least historically. I would suggest a section under Virtual Library museums pages. —Jonathan Bowen (talk) 13:18, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have also added some further information and references to the article. Jonathan Bowen (talk) 17:45, 24 July 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.