Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/United Cracking Force/Release History

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 delete (block-compress error). – AB CD 15:43, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

United Cracking Force/Release History[edit]

Second nomination for deletion. This is unencyclopedic--just a massive dump (495066 bytes) in an ideosyncratic, space-filling format--and has already been moved to Wikisource during the course of the last VfD. delete from Wikipedia article space, use soft redirect instead if required. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:55, 1 May 2005 (UTC) Link to first VfD discussion[reply]

Comment

This is a sample of the article content for anyone who may have tried, and failed, to download the whole thing:

1994 Release List

 ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±    
 ±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±ÚÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ¿±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±

(A few dozen lines of this kind of stuff, followed by:)

 ±±±±±±ÚÍÍÍÍ¿±±±±³   ÜÜÜ   ÜÜÜ     ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ     ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ   ³°°±±ÚÍÍÍÍ¿±±±±±±±
 ±±±ÚÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ[ 1 9 9 4 ]ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ¿±±±±

(and then vast amounts of this stuff:)

 ±±±³ PKP51UCF.ZIP    82294  04-04-94  Pkpress 5.1           *REGISTERED* ³°°±±

(Thousands and thousands of lines of it.)

Repeated for each of ten years. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:04, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Let the voters review the article for themselves, since it quite clearly already suggests which font to use (Terminal, 10 point, or Code page 437) to view this list. IMHO, it's unfair to intentionally excerpt ASCII art borders and exclude the content when the majority of the article is content and not ASCII art borders. —RaD Man (talk) 00:18, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- There's nothing to stop the reader doing this...except the document size, which makes it almost impossible to view without broadband. Also the fact that the document requires special arrangements just to be viewed properly is in itself a strong suggestion that the document is unencyclopedic. Your claim that I omitted content is incorrect. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:14, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

agree Delete. can't we speedy this as a recreation of already deleted content? I didn't check the history - it was taking longer to load than this page. . . . Soundguy99 17:52, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. This isn't a recreation. The article was transwikied to Wikisource but not deleted from Wikipedia. Very odd. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 18:19, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete this and also the United Cracking Force page, neither of which has any encyclopedic content. Martg76 19:06, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete this, and nominate United Cracking Force for vfd. -- BDAbramson ^thimk 20:28, 2005 May 1 (UTC)
Keep, as before. This is a reference for United Cracking Force. I don't see a problem with keeping this in Wikipedia. We have many other lists, this one just happens to be in ASCII. Rhobite 21:20, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
- If so, then the page should be reformatted to meet wikipedia conventions for making lists - get rid of all those promotional ASCII headers! -- BDAbramson ^thimk 17:29, 2005 May 4 (UTC)
Delete, of no encyclopedic interest whatsover. I don't even understand why it's on Wikisource, but especially since it's already there, just put a link to it in the main article. Rick K 22:21, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
Delete, the main United Cracking Force article is debatable and a reasonable argument could be made for keeping it due to that organization's influence within the warez community, but this is just a warez file list. Not only does it have no encyclopedic value, it has the potential to draw unwanted attention from copyright holders. Firebug 22:25, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. As I said last time, there are possible legal reasons not to keep this here, and its encyclopedic value is marginal at best. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:35, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
- Oh come on, a list of cracks isn't illegal. Rhobite 03:52, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
- 100% completely absolutely untrue, this is not even a potential copyright issue for the following reasons: 1) not a link to crack files. 2) not a link to the original copyright holders programs. 3) does not contain any "illegal" material as per current US federal regulations. ALKIVAR™ 05:23, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, but keep the main United Cracking Force article for now. — JIP | Talk 04:46, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Not the place to say keep or delete the main article - this is the not the vfd for United Cracking Force. Not meaning to pick on you, JIP, but no one should have the impression that a decision is being made here on anything but the page in the vfd title. -- BDAbramson ^thimk 17:38, 2005 May 4 (UTC)
keep, i'm really sick of people consistanly re-vfding stuff because they were upset at the previous result. ALKIVAR™ 05:23, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I have had nothing to do with this article or its earlier VfD. I noted that you had it transwikied and thus we have two copies on WikiMedia's servers (and it *is*, as it happens, the largest article on Wikipedia at present,at nearly 500KB). Normally after transwikying to wikisource I would expect to have the Wikipedia version deleted. I don't want your file to be removed from WikiMedia's servers but this physical duplication is clearly unnecessary. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:35, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It's been transwikied already, and it's original source material. United Cracking Force already has an article. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 15:30, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete, no potential to become encyclopedic, no matter what size it is, no matter what its VfD history is. The group seems (barely) notable enough to keep the parent article, but there's no way content like this belongs on WP. None of the content appears suitable even for merging into a History section of the parent article. And it's all been transwikied anyhow. Barno 15:32, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It is a uniquely formatted and encyclopedic list. (\/)OO(\/) 17:56, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Above vote is by a sockpuppet of a banned user. Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#GRider_sockpuppet_theatre. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 13:05, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- By "uniquely formatted", do you mean "including hidden stuff, such as obfuscated keys to cracked software so people can use Wikimedia servers to work around legal responsibilities"? Even if not, this encyclopedia does not welcome uniquely formatted lists, and is not a list repository. Barno 18:55, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Who says so? This encyclopedia is community built. If the article is incorrectly formatted according to some manual of style, just fix it. (\/)OO(\/) 19:02, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - The article is not formatted according to any style guide; it's an ASCII data dump with tons of non-text and some filenames and attributes. WP is for facts, like the description and history in the parent article, not for huge raw files. Even if the half-megabyte were edited to a hundred-line list of just the names, it would not be encyclopedic no matter how it was formatted. Barno 20:48, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
keep: this is computer scene history. Also I don't get the point of re-VfDing. We had this discussion before. --Avatar-en 19:12, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- When the previous discussion was held, ~~the consensus was to transwiki~~, which was done incompletely (removal from the WP side wasn't completed). This VfD exists to implement the previous decision. I'm only adding policy reasons why the content shouldn't kept on WP in case the resolving admin thinks this copy should be kept. Barno 20:48, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - To clarify, in the previous VfD (linked above by Tony S), the votes were approx. 7 Keep (or transwiki-and-still-keep) to 15 for Delete or Transwiki-without-specifying-Keep. The consensus is at the edge of clear deletion, but the admin treated it as consensus to "keep" (an overbroad interpretation of "no clear consensus -> keep by default"), and did not delete the non-article. Barno 20:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - What seems to have happened is that Alkivar unilaterally said that he had transwikied. Then the VfD closer chose to disregard all votes made after this announcement. A little odd, but I won't dispute it. But clearly there is a good argument to be made for deleting a redundant copy of an extremely large, unencyclopedic file. I don't care what intrinsic value it has, even if it's the contents of George Bush's brain it doesn't belong her if it isn't an encyclopedia article. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:17, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - I have to summon all my Wikilove to avoid making a sophomoric wisecrack about the last sentence. I'll at least wikify one: "WP is not paper, but can we spare one whole byte of storage?" Barno 15:08, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
keep like last time Yuckfoo 23:37, 2 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, as per various above. This is just ASCII art bragging taken from warez .nfo files. This is basically a Google keyword list, someone could use the ZIP filenames here to find gigs of illegal crap, and it could be seen as being our "fault". I just tried one now, and I got hits that would likely lead me to the download. It's enough to know that a warez group has cracked 500+ titles, without giving out the exact filenames of the cracked versions. WP is not a warez release list. It's easy to find warez, sure, but we don't want to be seen as helping that process in any way. Master Thief Garrett 00:11, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Extreme keep and delist. The armchair lawyering here is fucking hysterical. —RaD Man (talk) 00:18, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource and delete. -Sean Curtin 00:33, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
Delete. How is this an encyclopedia article? How could it ever be one? It's a subpage, even... something that has been discouraged since long before I showed up. Isomorphic 00:46, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. On Wikisource--no reason to keep it here. Niteowlneils 03:42, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Again, it's raw data. This is not a place to dump your raw data. Even if your raw data were really useful or of wide and encyclopedic interest---which this isn't---it doesn't make itself into an encyclopedia article. It's huge, it's ugly, it's wankery, and it barely even belongs on Wikisource. grendel|khan 14:45, 2005 May 3 (UTC)
Delete. Not an article. At the very least move it to a more appropriate title, one that isn't a subpage. —Xezbeth 14:54, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
weak keep on the condition of setting the fonts to something that makes the logos look like they should (e.g. the Eternal Dreams font) //Gargaj 19:15, 2005 May 3 (UTC)
Delete. We can keep this on wikisource, if we really need it.Mgw 21:53, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
delete as non-encyclopedic. Wikisource might make sense; I don't care there. Brighterorange 23:23, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
delete Redundant, non-encyclopedic. 141.211.138.85 23:26, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely delete. This is not an encyclopedia article. —Lowellian (talk) 01:40, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
Delete. This information has already been transwikied to a more appropriate location. There is absolutely no reason to keep it here anymore. Indrian 02:40, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
Keep. Once the rest of the Internet goes down and everything can only be found with a wikipedia:// address, this information will be wanted and needed. Don't banish it to the darkness. --Jscott 04:49, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- It is not being banished to the darkness. It is already on wikisource, which is part of the larger wikimedia foundation. Your comments make no sense. Indrian 07:15, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
Delete unless the article changes massively. The information given here is basically incomprehensible in its current form to anyone not active in the cracking scene. The article requires more background information. The ASCII art should be stripped since it doesn't contain any informational value. Furthermore, I would put the release list in a real HTML table. Anyway, can you give me a reason why all releases of a distributor (legal or illegal) should be put on wikipedia, no matter who it is? It's not exactly something that interests more than 20 people in the world. The computer world is a very fast living place. Nobody knows the programs that have been released in 1997 anymore, although this was only a few years ago. Why did you even care, please explain? -- Paniq 08:47, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Quale 10:05, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, Wikipedia is not a file storage area or data dump. Gazpacho 08:11, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Absolutely no encylopedic value (along with obnoxious formatting). -- taviso 10:54, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Kill it with fire. DS 16:24, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. --John 10:53, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete extreme waste of disk space. Grue 18:35, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete. WP:WWIN#Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files. --cesarb 01:24, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Kindly point to where the links, images, or media files are in this LIST OF DATA! If your going to vote delete, at least point to a valid reason why. ALKIVAR™ 03:46, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - You don't need to have a valid reason to vote delete here. —RaD Man (talk) 04:04, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - That subsection is a bit misnamed. It's not only about links, images, and media files. See point 3: "Mere collections of [...] or other source material". I could also have pointed to WP:WWIN#Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base item 2. --cesarb 04:55, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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.