Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wikilyrics

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - deleted - SimonP 22:23, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Wikilyrics

Only claim to notability is incessantly spamming empty wikilyrics pages to the external links sections of articles. --W(t) 22:56, 2005 May 27 (UTC)

• Delete, advertising, wikipedia is not a collection of external links. Megan1967 02:36, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, I run wikilyrics, made this article, and added several external links on wikipedia articles of artists. Let's discuss this here - I'm interested in knowing what is wrong with the situation. Maybe I do not fully understand wikipedia's rules. In my understanding, I see nothing wrong with linking artists to their pages on wikilyrics. Each artist category in wikilyrics actually links back to the respective page on wikipedia and I had thought the interwiki linking would make content/metadata easy for users to access. I only see this as helping both wikipedia and wikilyrics. Now - I see what you are saying about linking to categories which don't have much actual content on wikilyrics. In such cases, wikipedia is getting nothing out of the links while wikilyrics is getting wikipedia's visitors. Is there wikipedia policy about this somewhere? Could we say that wikipedia should only link to wikilyrics categories with at least, say...20 song lyrics pages? Give me some more information to work with. The goal was not to anger fellow wikipedians and spam the database. The goal was to create a wiki which provided free-content song lyrics with no ads and I thought mutual linkage between the sites would benefit everyone. Maybe I am wrong. If you wish, feel free to discuss this in my user talk as well. --Anthony5429 04:19, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • If you run wikilyrics, the article could be seen as "self-promotion", see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Megan1967 04:37, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, there are certain guidelines for linking, see Wikipedia:External links. I've posted that link to several anon users who were adding wikilyrics links and warned them but have always been ignored. Still, on the bright side, since you seem cooperative enough that probably means those anons were other people, which means wikilyrics must be taking off at least slightly. --W(t) 04:40, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
• Strongly Keep Wikilyrics is one of the most innovative and creative aspects I've seen here. It allows articles to be linked to lyrics, yet to keep up the theme of a Wikipedian style entry. The links are very useful and I am planning on linking lyrics in several articles. This is a great resource, and should not be deleted at all OmegaWikipedia 15:40, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Your links to this spammer will be deleted. His site is also a major copyright violation and will probably get shut down at some point, just as lyrics.ch was. RickK 22:12, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
• Strongly Keep Is it not conceivable that someone interested in an artist enough to search for a wikipedia article would also want to see lyrics by this artist? Wikilyrics shares many of the same ideals and ethics as Wikipedia, this relationship can be mutually beneficial. Kafuffle 17:50, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Is it not conceivable that we object to this person spamming Wikipedia with links to his site? RickK 22:12, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

  I have already voted but would also like to add a little more. Megan1967: I see what you are saying but want to mention that although I do run the site and have the actual webspace, wikilyrics is a public online community. Anyone is welcome to sign up and/or edit the database and if you take the time to look around, you will see that there are several users (44 right now) contributing to the site and it is not an outlet for self-promotion. In fact, please take a second to look at my Wikipedia User Page and Wikilyrics User Page; you will note that neither has significant information about who I am. I can therefore not be accused of self-promotion. The site was made to be a public, free-content, online wiki community where people could find lyrics to songs without the annoying ads and spyware conventional lyrics sites are accustomed to. I see interwiki linking between wikilyrics and wikipedia as only beneficial to both sites and the users of each. --Anthony5429 18:09, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

• Delete - blatant admitted self-promotion. It's also best that we don't have even the appearance of association with them if the music industry decides they're going to go on another round of shutting lyrics sites down for copyright infringement. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:11, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, and on the Wikilyrics Main Page, he's exhorting his users to show up and vote to keep this article. That's not going to win you points here. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:12, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, delete, delete. It's self promotion. It's advertising. This guy has been running through all the articles on musicians spamming them with links to this website. I even bothered to check out a couple -- one had lyrics for one song by the artist, the other didn't have any! Furthermore, putting that link on the Wikilyrics website to vote against the deletion? Geez. Alexa rank down in the 800,000's, and even the article mentions the site was started not even two months ago. Just because websites are open content, freely editable, etc. doesn't mean that Wikipedia should treat them any different. Spam is spam. CryptoDerk 20:15, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
  • There are plenty of reasons to zap this article, CryptoDerk. See my further comments and delete vote below. However, a low number of visitors who are sufficiently conformist, docile, uneducated, etc. to be using Windows plus the mediocre browser MSIE (both needed for "Alexa", the last time I looked) plus the "Alexa" spyware itself isn't a good reason to zap any article. -- Hoary 04:52, 2005 May 29 (UTC)
• Delete. "started on April 6, 2005.", wiki has not established its notability, influence or longevity. Advertising. RickK 22:06, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

  RickK, how long should a site be up before it is considered notable or expressing longevity? If it needs to be a certain age, I can repost this article in a set amount of time. I am not familiar with the policy - please fill me in. CryptoDerk, there are several stub articles on wikilyrics. There are, however, far more completed articles. You can look around if you wish. Cyrius, what is wrong with asking the users to vote against deletion of this article? I don't see anything wrong with that and it is not self promotion because the site does not promote me. Also, many wikipedia articles already link to lyrics sites so the copyright issue should not be brought up unless the site is included as a wikimedia project - which it is not. Wikipedia's disclaimer specifically says that it claims no affiliation with its content. That includes external links. Am I wrong? Also, please fill me in on the lyrics.ch incident - I am not familiar with it. Wikilyrics has a disclaimer on every page which credits the lyrics to their writer. Is that enough? One other thing - I stopped encouraging the users to add links to Wikipedia since some people see this as spamming. Please let me know what it takes to make wikilyrics notable and worthy of being linked to in wikipedia. I looked through Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not but saw nothing definitive on the subject. It would be extremely helpful if someone would come out and say, "you need x number of active users, x number of articles, and the site must be x months old." I'm trying to be helpful here - please give me some useful feedback. --Anthony5429 22:51, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

  • There are 3 arguments for deletion of this article: copyright infringement, self-promotion, and lack of notoriety. With regards to copyright infringement, please see the Wikilyrics disclaimer. I have already posted my counter argument regarding self-promotion and why wikilyrics is not guilty of it. Above is my statement about lack of notoriety and concerning that, I honestly don't know enough information to make a strong point about it. --Anthony5429 02:24, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Your "General disclaimer", to which you link above, is stunningly wrong-headed. You say you're not a lawyer. Neither am I. But I am capable of reading simple explanations of copyright law written for laymen. Aren't you capable too -- or do you just choose to not to read this stuff and instead to rely on wishful thinking? Nobody has said that your site needs more "notoriety" to get an article here. They have said that it needs to be notable. Of course, notability includes true notoriety -- murder one person and you're probably still a nobody, murder half a dozen and WP will write you up -- and large-scale copyright violation may eventually win your site notoriety. (My own guess is that it will wither away or be closed down first.) -- Hoary 04:46, 2005 May 29 (UTC)
• Delete: WP is not a site directory. -- Hoary 04:46, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

• Keep: Wikilyrics is one of the most innovative and creative aspects I've seen here. It allows articles to be linked to lyrics, yet to keep up the theme of a Wikipedian style entry. The links are very useful and I am planning on linking lyrics in several articles. This is a great resource, and should not be deleted at all --Florian huber 06:57, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
  • User's 4th edit. RickK 22:17, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Advert, non-notable, WP is not a web directory. Quale 08:12, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep: Wikilyrics is an open alternative resource to other commercial, advert-, error- and popup-full web sites, which make it a hard time for somebody looking for lyrics to find them; unlike them, wikilyrics allow any person interested in lyrics to find them quickly. If it is expanded and gets more popular, as we are expecting - it is not up for a long time yet -, it will allow us to create a directory of song lyrics, which can be very handy for open source multimedia software (imagine automated lyrics downloading using the built-in MediaWiki XML export, with, for instance, a plugin on XMMS). If we decide to delete the external links on song- and artist-related articles, at least I suggest that we kept the article about the website. --dionyziz 09:34, May 29, 2005 (UTC).

  Here's a proposition. Feel free to voice your opinions about it. Since I'm not getting definitive information about what it takes for WP to consider a site notable, how about we delete this article and I'll put it back up if and only if there are ever more than 5000 songs in the database and 100 users. If the site never reaches those goals or it is shut down because people believe it infringes on copyrights, I will not add the article back. If the goals are reached, I will add the article and instead of links which say (artist) Lyrics @ Wikilyrics, I will only add links which say (artist) Lyrics and furthermore, will instruct the wikilyrics users not to add the links if there is not substantial lyrics for the artist. Moreover, I will tell the users not to add the link if there is already a lyrics link on the article. I've seen that in several pages already where there are already external links to lyrics sites. Anyone is free to agree or disagree with this proposition. It's just a suggestion. Please tell me what you think. Again, I'm trying to be helpful. I'm not trying to spam WP. Interwiki linking should be beneficial to both sites. --Anthony5429 17:15, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

  • My advice to you is not to waste any more of your time with Wikipedia. You've had a taste of how they operate. Mirror Vax 17:56, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
    • "They"? Are you not a Wikipedia editor? But, Anthony, let me ask you a question. What would you do if I came over to your Wikilyrics site and began creating articles about subjects which had nothing to do with lyrics? Would you delete them, or would you welcome me with open arms and tell me that I'm doing a great job and to do more? If we have to follow the rules set on your site, why don't you have to follow the rules we've set on our site? RickK 22:17, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • We can't really make deals, otherwise everybody and their brother would be trying for one. However, if the article is deleted and you come back some time in the future when your site is more than just an interesting idea, I think you'll get a better reception. Unfortunately, as I write this, you have taken Wikilyrics completely offline due to the copyright issue, which isn't going to help with having a Wikipedia article. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:22, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

---

Note: Anthony has shut down the Wikilyrics site. He has written on the Main page:

Dear Fellow Wikilyrics User,

Several individuals have pointed out that Wikilyrics may not be fully legal. Therefore, I have temporarily shut it down. I will reopen it once someone can find definitive proof that using the following disclaimer on every song page prevents copyright infringement. If you have any information on the subject, please tell me in my Wikipedia User Talk Page. My apologies for the inconvenience.

Current Disclaimer: "The copyright of these lyrics belongs to their writer(s) and/or performer(s) and Wikilyrics does not claim ownership of these lyrics or their copyright."

-Tony

-RickK 22:19, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

---

• Delete - I will repost if the copyright issue is cleared up and the site becomes more popular. Wikilyricians, thanks for the suppport. Wikipedians, sorry for all the comotion. --Anthony5429 02:49, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, a link to a site with copyvio... just doesnt look good. JamesBurns 10:52, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

  After doing some looking around, I found out what I needed to know about the copyright issue. With some modifications to the disclaimer, that is now all cleared up and Wikilyrics is doing nothing illegal. Just thought I'd mention that. Again, you are welcome to delete this article. I will repost it a while from now when Wikilyrics has grown more and see if Wikipedia finds it notable then. Thanks for your help and sorry again for all the comotion. --Anthony5429 02:39, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Self-promotion, article does not establish notability for this project. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:04, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - advertisement. - SimonP 22:23, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.