Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ZHLT

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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. seresin | wasn't he just...? 17:14, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ZHLT

ZHLT (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Non-notable software. Some counterarguments were given on the talk page, but they make no reference to policy or guideline and I see no independent coverage of this software in any reliable sources. The article was created by a ZHLT developer. Jfire (talk) 16:54, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Salix alba (talk) 21:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
  • delete Lots of fourm posts, and trivial sources, but nothing meets WP:RS. --Salix alba (talk) 21:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
    • weak delete following changes bellow, I'd be happy to change to keep if a source could be found. I did try some google searches but I only found a good number of blog posts. --Salix alba (talk) 00:24, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Pretty strong delete Lots of problems. Somewhat of an ad, no links, and not notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mm40 (talk • contribs) 21:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. This article has no references and much of it looks like original research/personal opinion. It is also written like an advertisement or perhaps a love letter to the software in question asserting that it is a "shining example[,]" a "household name[,]" and "higher quality than the original game company[,]" all of which are unsupported statements of personal opinion. It also contains obvious speculation that it has "probably been used for 85%+ of all maps released for HL1[,]" again with no sources cited. It further fails to establish notability. Just because a particular game is notable, doesn't automatically mean that a given after-market editing hack program is itself notable. ZHLT gets a number of ghits but they all seem to be either directly related to the software (primary sources,) or niche sites; I found no significant, reliable, independent, secondary source coverage as per WP:N. OlenWhitaker (talk) 22:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The new version of the article is a considerable improvement in terms of style. The subjective info has been removed and the article sticks to facts which is much better, but there are still no WP:RS compliant sources (or indeed any at all) to either verify the article's contents or establish notability. By a strict interpretation of the policies, this article should be out...however...Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and it is true that the spirit of the policy, not its letter, is of paramount importance. The question of "notable to who?" must be considered carefully in such a case since everything is notable to someone and not notable to another. For a niche item like this software, I realize that it may be of interest to a fair number of people, but that that fact may be difficult to prove. I would, therefore, change my vote to keep if just one article or review about the software (not just mentioning it, about it) were added. I'm not asking for the front page of the New York Times, I'd even be happy with an online gaming mag here. Does that seem fair? OlenWhitaker • talk to me or don't • ♣ ♥ ♠ ♦ 13:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC) 13:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
That seems eminently fair to me, Olen, and I will happily withdraw the nomination if at least one source evincing substantial coverage is found. Jfire (talk) 19:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I have seen them discussed in a gaming magazine several years ago. I will try to find coverage, although it might take some time. 98.203.237.75 (talk) 21:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
After some searching, I don't think it will be possible to find this or any other substantial reference in a reasonable amount of time. I have found a lot of mentions on a variety of mapping and gaming news sites, but they tend to be short blurbs and not substantial coverage. Most are along the lines of "hey mappers, ZHLT version X has been released and implements new features YZW. Check it out at the official website (link)". Mappers are apparently not the target audience of magazines. I will be on the lookout for substantial coverage - just don't get your hopes up. )-: 98.203.237.75 (talk) 00:13, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Yeah wow when I wrote those arguments on the talk page, it was to explain notability. Although the statements are true, I didn't expect what I wrote to be incorporated into the article itself. If they are in the article they will need to be sourced. 98.203.237.75 (talk) 02:27, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep ZHLT is highly notable, as you will find if you talk to anyone in the game modding community. I believe this is an example of people who don't know anything about a subject unintentionally displaying their systematic bias. I gave a series of arguments on the talk page as to why ZHLT is notable, which should be read before rejecting this subject as non-notable. The nominator mentioned that I did not bring WP policy into my points, and yeah that is true. Please give me a bit more time to research WP policy more carefully so that I may cite it (if appropriate).
  • OlenWhitaker takes issue with the style of the article and lack of sources. That is a problem, but should be dealt with by improving the article instead of deleting it. In any case, if the article is deleted, it should be done so in such a way that it can be easily re-created and written in the appropriate style. 98.203.237.75 (talk) 02:05, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I now have read the policies and guidelines referenced, and believe I can properly address the points raised with respect to WP policy. (note: I am not a developer of ZHLT, just a former mapper that used it)
  1. NPOV - I have edited the article to remove a lot of the POV people here were objecting to. This is an ongoing process and further improvements are welcome, of course. Furthermore, the article should not be deleted on this basis alone, as WP:DEL states, "If the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion... A variety of tags can be added to articles to note the problem.".
  2. Verifiability - WP:V states that "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source" (emphasis mine). This is not a controversial article where strict sourcing is required! It is an informative article detailing a technical tool, the details of which are sourced in the websites linked. No one is likely to "challenge" the fact that ZHLT implemented the null texture, or that there is an SDK for Unix. The one potentially "controversial" piece of information (after my recent edits today) is in the 2nd paragraph which talks about how widespread the tool is. No one who has ever mapped for HL or GoldSrc would challenge this statement, and a few minutes of googling around will confirm its validity. However, if those here believe that this statement is controversial, the offending paragraph can be easily removed without deleting the whole article!
  3. Reliable Sources - Going by the "letter of the law", this is a tough point to refute. The article is not sourced by WP:RS sources, this is true. It would also be very hard to track down the magazine articles and so forth that have mentioned ZHLT. However, what I gather from reading these policies is that the spirit of WP:RS is to stop people from adding things that are blatantly false, and serve as an arbiter where facts are disputed. It was not intended to weed out simple obvious facts, otherwise every article in the whole of WP would need a citation after every sentence, and the project would grind to a halt. In this case, I ask that we use some common sense here, as the WP:RS page advises us to do. In terms of policy, I would note that WP:V is a policy, whereas WP:RS is a guideline, and WP:V states that reliable sources only need to be used for points that are likely to be challenged. As mentioned above, I think the bulk of the information in this article is very unlikely to be challenged after the edits I recently made.
  4. Notability - I think that a lot of people here have the wrong impression about this. ZHLT is not "yet another" random program used by a few hackers to make minor edits to some computer game. It is a tool of major importance to the mapping community, as I explain on the talk page, and it has a somewhat unique and interesting development history which I would like to expand upon if the article is kept. This is probably the most difficult thing to convince non-modders/mappers of - we have hundreds of tools and programs, and without doing a bit of mapping it would would be hard to understand why a particular compile tool is important while a certain model viewer program is not, etc. To a non-mapper they all look the same, and this creates a form of bias in articles about technical subjects. All I can say is that I am a mapper, and after Valve Hammer Editor, this tool is the second most important program in mapping for Half-Life/Counterstrike/GoldSrc/etc, and has had considerable influence on the entire mod scene. I would also point out that, according to WP:N, a lack of reliable sources does not imply a lack of notability. There they state, "If an article currently does not cite reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, that does not necessarily mean the topic is not notable." This is one of those edge cases where a subject is notable, but not of the type that tends to get covered in news stories, etc.
  • I hope that some of you will at least reconsider your positions after reading this information and looking at the modified article. Thanks. 98.203.237.75 (talk) 11:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, - Tiptoety talk 19:33, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete Even after the rewrite, this doesn't seem to really assert any notability criteria. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 19:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. No sources, no assertion of notability. Even if everything in the article could be sourced, it still wouldn't be an encyclopedic subject. Quale (talk) 20:19, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Question. I am still an admin and/or editor at several big mapping sites. If I wrote a solid article and published it there, would that qualify as a legitimate source, or would that be considered a conflict of interest? I could also probably convince another editor to write such an article if writing it myself would pose a problem. These are neutral sites that got huge readership from ~1999-2004, but are waning now. I would take care not to present false information (as always). What do you think? Thanks. 98.203.237.75 (talk) 00:27, 15 March 2008 (UTC)


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.