Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/LocalBitcoins

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 ...this is why bundled AFDs don't save anyone any time. Delete BTEC-E; No consensus on Itbit or Williams; Keep the rest. Black Kite (talk) 17:15, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

LocalBitcoins[edit]

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I'm going to save AfD a load of time by nominating a large group of mostly non-notable exchanges and start-up companies focused around cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin. Almost all of these articles in this catergory are stubs that fail WP:GNG, WP:PROMO, and WP:BLP in the case of the persons, with the exception of BitInstant which I believe does meet WP:GNG and doesn't violate PROMO, although anybody is free to make a case as to why not.

Here are the companion articles:

Delete itBit. Not notable based on coverage at this point, in my opinion, though I'm sure some would disagree with my reasoning. A ton of reliable sources had articles about the company on or near November 11, 2013, based on a press release that day about the startup company raising $3.5 million, but that just doesn't weigh heavily for me as far as notability. Virtually all the articles simply repeated things said in the press release. A couple emphasized different aspects, like focusing on the networking equipment or software they chose, listed in the press release, rather than their fundraising. There was a lesser amount of press the next month when Gaurav Burman, a wealthy businessman who may be well known in India, also invested in the company, but that seemed like a fairly unimportant story, also covered with what seemed like a single source provided by the company. And it's mentioned in passing in a few articles, like this, which explains that it's a bitcoin exchange, and explains what a bitcoin exchange does. I am probably overlooking some coverage in Tamil, Malay, or Chinese, and it could be substantial, in-depth coverage that would cause me to change my mind. I'll check back for additional sources. Agyle (talk) 08:42, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete Vitalik Buterin~~ [Reconsidering due to newly added FastCompany & ~~Reuters~~ [oops – just press release on reuters.com] cites; will post at bottom of page when I re-decide]. Not notable based on coverage, yet (impressive for age 19!). The Wired article has a very minimal amount of information about him, maybe 3 paragraphs, and is primarily about the Ethereum project he's working on. Others articles mention him more in passing, or get a quote from him, but it's not the significant coverage from multiple reliable sources needed for a biography. Agyle (talk) 08:42, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - perhaps they could be merged into one article called Bitcoin exchanges? Jonpatterns (talk) 13:36, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is an existing article called Digital currency exchangers. A previous list of such exchanges was voted for deletion. Lists of cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and wallet addresses in the past have been prone to arguably trivial additions. Using Wikipedia's notability standards for each company/service provides guidance on which are worth covering in related lists or articles. ––Agyle (talk) 04:25, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand it correctly, Digital currency exchanger is about all digital currencies - not just cryptocurrencies. Maybe a subsection on cryptocurrencies as part of that article would be useful. Jonpatterns (talk) 12:20, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bitstamp has significant coverage in the news, from the BBC, Reuters, The Verge, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. I can't see any valid reason to delete it. Danrok (talk) 14:31, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bitstamp Seems to be in the news daily now, all over. My google alert is full of mentions, including several today mentioning that they are picking up payment processing. Keep. jtjathomps —Preceding undated comment added 23:17, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Both Bitstamp and BTC China state they are the world's largest exchange. Jonpatterns (talk) 14:45, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bitstamp is the worlds biggest exchange by volume in USD, BTC China worlds biggest exchange by volume in CNY (Currently Huoby). Anyway I've copied all the articles marked for deletion now so if you want to remove it from this fascist propaganda site then that's great. Please do it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:470:DC2E:2:61E7:E1AD:A437:98EE (talk) 02:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CoinDesk and BTC China have said many exchanges fake their volume data. There is no regulatory agency overseeing/verifying any of the market data being published by third party exchange tracking websites, and all of it should be taken with a grain of salt. ––Agyle (talk) 08:57, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@2001:470:DC2E:2:61E7:E1AD:A437:98EE: why not help improve the articles so they don't get deleted. You may also like / find amusing the Association_of_Inclusionist_Wikipedians. @Agyle: If the articles are kept it would be improvement to include a note about the self reporting nature of an exchange's size/ Jonpatterns (talk) 12:20, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Most Wikipedia articles on these topics cite random, anonymously-run "index" websites to make claims. Trying to improve articles by removing such misleading info is a time-consuming, losing battle. Adding caveats to point out the info is unreliable based on that one article wouldn't be appropriate, as CoinDesk is a weak source, and its allegations mention few specific exchanges. While everyone who understands the subject realizes all the figures are unreliable, due to intentional manipulation or as a matter of normal account management, they seem to be an intrinsic part of Wikipedia's coverage on cryptocurrencies. This is a all irrelevant to the AfD discussion though, which is a question about coverage. Volume, balance sheets, or market cap don't factor into Wikipedia's "notability" test. ––Agyle (talk) 00:45, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete BTC-e. Couldn't establish notability (WP:GNG or WP:CORP), despite being an important company. I spot-checked several established English-language news sites with reputations for fact-checking for coverage of "BTC-e" . All I found was incidental coverage, quoting a price from them, mentioning that BitStamp and BTC-e are the highest volume exchanges when covering some other subject, on rare occasion printing a sentence from a spokesperson, or something similar. The number of mentions, and the repetition that it's one of the largest exchanges, absolutely establishes that it's an important company, but that's different than being a notable company as Wikipedia defines it. It's rare to have such a wide difference between the two, but the requirement for significant coverage from these types of sources is so that there is verifiable information about a subject on which to base an article.

I did not include CoinDesk or Bitcoin Magazine here; I consider them very weak reliable sources, usable for some uncontroversial information, but lacking a real reputation for fact-checking. For example, Bitcoin Magazine's "About" page says they have two reporters and an editor, none with journalism experience, while I'm guessing the newspapers below all have full-time professional fact-checkers.

I did not check sources in other languages. Bulgarian media would seem likely to have more coverage, as that's where the company is based.

Source for "BTC-e"	Articles largely about subject	Articles with more than a paragraph on subject	Articles with minor/trivial mention(s)
Wall Street Journal	0	0	16
Financial Times	0	0	7
Bloomberg	0	0	6
International Business Times	0	0	6
Washington Post	0	0	4
Forbes	0	0	4
Houston Chronicle	0	0	4
The Guardian	0	0	3
Chicago Tribune	0	0	2
San Francisco Chronicle	0	0	2
(conference proceedings)	0	0	2
New York Times	0	0	1
LA Times	0	0	1
CNN	0	0	1
Barrons	0	0	0
New York Daily News	0	0	0
Fortune	0	0	0
Entrepreneur	0	0	0
USA Today	0	0	0
The Sun	0	0	0
CBC News	0	0	0
(scholarly journals)	0	0	0
(independent books)	0	0	0

––Agyle (talk) 06:09, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For each of them:
- LocalBitcoins: Keep, per [1] and [2]. The first article is entirely about LocalBitcoins, while it is mentioned several times throughout the second. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Bitstamp: Easy keep, per [3], [4], and many more.
- BTC China: Keep, per [5] and [6].
- BTC-E: Weak delete. I found a lot of mentions but most of them just mentioned it as one of the leading Bitcoin exchanges, without in-depth coverage. The best I found was [7].
- ItBit: Weak keep. It's actually not very well-known in the Bitcoin community, but it seems to have plenty of coverage: [8] and [9].
- Vitalik Buterin: Delete. No significant coverage found.
- Mark T. Williams: Delete. No significant coverage, no published papers either (tried to compute an h-index for him, but couldn't find any).
King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

- LocalBitcoins: Keep
- Bitstamp: Easy keep
- BTC China: Easy Keep
- BTC-E: Weak keep
- ItBit: Weak keep
- Vitalik Buterin: Weak keep
- Mark T. Williams: Delete
- Chris Arnesen 02:49, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merge what can't be keeped (in line with WP:N, etc) with a generalised article, such as Digital currency exchanger. I'll leave it up to everyone else as to what should and shouldn't be kept/deleted, I don't have a firm opinion on this issue. --benlisquare_T•C•E 04:46, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Mark T. Williams. Did not meet WP:BIO or WP:ACADEMIC. Found no independent sources with any significant information about him. (The article cites some publications from Boston University, which is his employer, and while they may be reliable should not be considered "independent" for purposes of notability). I found nothing about him in academic literature, though I admittedly searched very little, as I found nothing but false positives on scholar.google.com (his name is very common). He has had a book and many articles published, but that's true of many authors, and doesn't establish notability. He won a "Beckwith Prize for Teaching Excellence and Service to the Undergraduate Program", awarded annually to a BU faculty member by BU, and while impressive, to me it falls short of "a well-known and significant award or honor" suggested by WP:BIO (I'd take that to mean an award open to a wider pool of people, and an award with which people within the profession (in this case teaching) would generally be familiar). ––Agyle (talk) 06:48, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Vitalik Buterin and Bitstamp. Vitalik is the founder and inventor of Ethereum; Chris Odom's comments on Ethereum reflect the idea of many in the community: "(Ethereum is...) the most innovative blockchain-based cryptocurrency since Bitcoin itself, and the only one that I would bother acquiring units of." Perhaps the problem is that the Ethereum page should have been created first. Bitstamp is an obvious keep. Sanpitch (talk) 04:57, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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First of all, I think the original poster should have nominated some or each of these for deletion seperately. As a member of the Bitcoin community and a Wikipedia editor here are my views, in brief:
- LocalBitcoins: Delete - popular site, but not enough independent news coverage to warrant notability.
- Bitstamp: week keep - Now the largest BTC exchange, notable and useful article.
- BTC China: note sure / weak delete - hard to see this growing beyound a stub right now. A relatively new exchange, not covered much by (western) media.
- BTC-E: not sure - this exchange has been in the news a lot and has a lot of speculation surroinding it's management.
- ItBit: Weak delete
- Vitalik Buterin: weak keep and improve - he's one of the most prominent and influential members of the bitcoin community. I'm sure more references can be found.
- Mark T. Williams: keep and clean up / relist AfD if necessary - seems to meet the conditions of WP:Prof (just barely). Article needs to be de-listified and cleaned up.
- : Danski14^(talk) 21:53, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Danski14, regarding Williams, did you find he barely met one of the 9 criteria in WP:Prof's WP:NACADEMICS, and if so which one? I know you're trying to be concise, but I'd like to consider your rationale.

Regarding Buterin, his prominence doesn't address the need for WP:RS, and if your decision rests on certainty they were overlooked, I'd challenge you to find them. (Significant coverage from published third-party RS). Agyle (talk) 12:25, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all except perhaps BTC China. CoinDesk meets the guidelines for a reliable source, and has covered all of these extensively. Xrt6L (talk) 07:07, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merge into Bitcoin 98.210.60.236 (talk) 10:46, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per WP:GNG. --Joshua Issac (talk) 11:43, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My votes:
- LocalBitcoins: Keep Well-known international site for buying bitcoins locally. Don't have RSes handy but I've definitely heard them specifically mentioned in a few non BTC-focused media outlets.
- Bitstamp: Strong keep Probably the current largest BTC exchange.
- BTC China: No opinion Probably a keep if it's one of the first or largest Chinese BTC exchanges.
- BTC-E: Weak Keep This is a fairly well known exchange, particularly because it exchanges many types of cryptocurrency. Don't have RSes for that, though, so it may be that it's not quite ready.
- ItBit: No opinion
- Vitalik Buterin: Keep Profiled in multiple news outlets, seems clearly notable.
- Mark T. Williams: Weak Keep / Relist separately I'm not crazy about this "group discussion" format as it is, and I especially think it's not right to lump two possibly notable BLPs in with a bunch of deletion discussions for BTC exchanges. He seems like if he's not notable he's on the razor's edge to me - guest columnist in several notable media outlets, has some sort of special appointment at a notable institution. Those details should probably be hashed out separately if the decision isn't keep. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 16:28, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete BTC-E per King of Hearts and Agyle. No significant coverage in reliable source. Empirical opinions irrelevant. --hydrox (talk) 23:03, 28 February 2014 (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.