Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Pghbridges.com

message: *I'm the article creator, and I admit I was of two minds about creating it, but decided it WAS encyclopedic. I have leaned extensively on this site for articles I've created here already, (Coraopolis Bridge for one) and plan to do so more in future. Personally, I don't think it fails WP:WEB per se (having had a hand in some of the discussion there) although it does fail the numbers tests (something I highlighted in the article itself). Here's the question for you delete voters: Where should this site be described? Is there somewhere in wikipediaspace for documenting reference sites? HAER has an article in articlespace. This is like HAER, except that it's more focused, and has deeper coverage in a certain geography. Documenting this site is not a way to make it more notable, it's a way to improve research here. Keep unless you can answer that question (where should it go if not in articlespace) satisfactorily.  ++Lar: t/c 19:06, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't had much time to look into this yet (being my birthday and having spent the day at Tate Modern and a concert at St Paul's Cathedral, since you didn't ask) but: this seems to me to be one of those cases where what is being voted on is not quite what it seems.  As a website, this looks a lot like a clear delete, without strong evidence of notability from verifiable external sources (and Lar, that does not mean I dispute your judgment, but rules is rules).  The point that it is not a website but a bridge database is interesting, in which case I'd say the article needs to be refactored - preferably to an unambiguous keep like Pittsburgh (bridges) or some such, since the area is supposedly notable for the number of them; this can then be rolled in as a source and discussed as such. Add some pictures, some other sources for the claim that the area is well known for its bridges, and robertus avunculus. If it's kept as a website-which-is-not-a-website it will cause problems either by having this same argument every now and then when someone Alexas it, or by being used as a precedent for other sites with stratospheric Alexa ranks. Just my $0.02. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C]  AfD? 22:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Happy Birthday Jzg, and style points for working "Bob's your uncle!" (in latin no less!) into the discussion. I'm coming around to thinking that (until the larger question of whether bibliographic sources should be handled at a higher level than just cites in articles gets attention) having this article become a section of a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Bridges that discusses ALL the references available and how they're best used, what to watch out for, areas of coverage, etc. is not an unacceptable outcome if "keep" doesn't carry the day. But I'm not sure the article could be reworked directly into Pittsburgh (bridges) as is, because that's not what it is, it's a source. ( Pittsburgh (bridges) is a good article topic because Pittsburgh DOES have a lot of bridges, and there is encyclopedic commentary to be said about the research into how the location, order of building, and other factors related to bridges influenced growth of the city and WHERE it happened.) But that's not this article, especially not with all the WP:V cruft it has in there now, which isn't relevant to how to use the reference as a good source, it was all put in to defend the article against this AfD. Consider also http://structurae.de which has an alexa rank of about 77K... that's a (worldwide scope) source for bridges, highly respected and depending on how this AfD comes out, it will either get an article soon too, or be another section of that bridge specific bibliography I'm talking about. Where I am going with this is that bibliographies are important to readers, not just article writers, and having them be article specific (lists of refs) means they don't carry as much about the sources as they could. Looked at another way, the typical game forum or band website is never going to be much of a reference for anything, but these sites are important (as HAER is) BECAUSE they're references, and thus should not be subject to the same WP:WEB tests but instead judged by different criteria (a point I raised somewhere near there recently). ++Lar: t/c 23:36, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand what you are saying about reference sites.  But that can be solved by documenting the source body, not just the site, surely?  Consider IRTAD (:de:IRTAD).  The Alexa rank of the site is around the million mark but it is a key authority for international comparitive road safety statistics.  It doesn't matter because an article is about IRTAD and the database, not the website.  But what you suggest re a project subpage also has obvious merit.  I'll pop next door and vote (TINAV) for it :-) - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C]  AfD? 20:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good suggestions, but the only problem here is that both pghbridges.com and structurae.de don't have organizations behind them. The organization for civil engineering stuff, at least in the US, ASCE, has an article here, and has a website, which I've used (especially for bios, if you want a bio for one of the top 50 civil engineers in the US by their gauge, that's a good place to start) but these two sites completely blow it away in depth and breadth of coverage.... (pghbridges in depth in one specific area, and structurae in depth AND breadth since it's world wide.) But neither has organizational backing, they're both apparently run by a fan (or small group of fans) of bridges. This gets at the question, are researchers part of the target audience for WP or just the interested reader who wants to know something, but not a lot? Researchers are going to want to know more about sources than just what the refs in an article give, so docoumenting sources somewhere (so the refs themselves can link to the source info) seems goodness... Look at Coraopolis Bridge, all the refs in it have links to HAER or to pghbridges.com besides citing where in the source they got their info.
Somewhat tangentially, I just noticed on meta that the French Wikipedia has started a separate namespace for references.  I haven't looked into it more deeply, but at face value it doesn't seem like a bad idea at all.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved from AfD