Category talk:Facebook groups

criteria

Given that the CfD was declined as no-consensus, what are the criteria for inclusion here? Clearly, it is not sufficient to just have a popular facebook group - otherwise, Obama would be here. So, what should be the criteria for inclusion? For example, if a group has a blog, a youtube channel, a facebook group, when should it be considered a 'facebook group' and not just a subset of Category:Social networking services or Category:Virtual communities? If the service started on facebook, but isn't there any longer, does that qualify? Or alternately, if it started on facebook, and has now branched out into using other social networking tools (twitter, youtube, etc), what then? Should we compare hits to see if the facebook group is the most popular or most defining part of the site? This is one example: Things_Bogans_Like - it is a notable blog, but we don't classify it as a notable Category:Wordpress blog. We can't always rely on media either; sometimes they will say (X is a facebook group) when in fact the facebook group is just a front for an actual organization with employees, budget, board of directors, etc., so does the existence of an organizational infrastructure disqualify it as a facebook group? --KarlB (talk) 22:09, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that being a facebook group is not in itself notable but I guess these groups have become notable for other reasons. I does not help that the deletion discussions seem to be the domain of inclusionists. Or am I out of step with the community.... -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:59, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

There were 4 votes to keep. I think the claims made in the discussion were that these could be notable (since the articles exist):

• "Facebook group is a defining characteristic for these organizations: "
• "this reflects a real phenomenon and change in the way organizations form and maintain themselves. Although it may be unclear and a bit ambiguous at present, I believe the most constructive way to take this on is to leave this for now and revisit the issue at a later time as a clearer picture of the phenomenon emerges."
• "I was dubious about this at first, because there are free-standing organisations that have a facebook presence, but the activists of the Arab Spring were largely orgainsised as facebook groups. If a facebook group is prominent enough to have a WP article, we need a category to deal with that"

So I guess I'm trying to figure out, what are the criteria - and at what point does something *stop* being just a facebook group and become something else (like an internet activist, or a social network, or a mailing list, or ...) --KarlB (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I voted keep and I also gave the second of the three arguments that are listed above. My principal precedent is the Norwegian Defence League. This group uses Facebook as its primary venue for discussion and communication between its leadership and membership. It also has its own website where articles and press releases are posted, but Facebook remains the main online venue. It also has a YouTube channel. So, I would assert that a criterion for groups being added to this category must be that a Facebook group is its principal organizational online venue. Should this change in the future I could foresee a sub-category, Category:Former Facebook groups or Category:Past Facebook groups, or something similar. __meco (talk) 08:22, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. If we found a bunch of groups that used 'Drupal' as a platform to set up a online community, would you suggest also creating a Category:Drupal websites category? Or how about this: [1]; this is one of the largest internet forums in the world; they have over 600,000 members. The software they use is called d2jsp. Should we create a category for Category:d2jsp forums? PHPBB is incredibly widely used in thousands of internet forums, but again if they are notable we don't classify them by the software they use.

I think I understand the point you're making above about NDL, but I'm not quite sure a) how you can determine that "facebook as its primary venue for discussion" and b) why, of all the social networking technologies out there, should facebook have a category for its groups, when we haven't created software-specific categories for any other social networking technologies that I can think of. I went to the Norwegian defense league website, and I couldn't figure out what would lead me to conclude that "facebook" was the primary venue (vs the website itself)--KarlB (talk) 12:03, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Deletion

I can't see how this article is of any use to anyone ? I've added it for deletion, Sorry Davey2010 Talk 12:17, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

This is a category, not an article, and in the previous CfD (Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_April_17#Category:Facebook_groups) I explained why it was useful to me. I am not a strict "inclusionist" (whatever that means). Would appreciate help with removing misguided links to hardware, per WP:OVERLINK. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:10, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Social movements (criteria for inclusion revisited)

It seems that the primary types of Facebook groups which establish notability and thus have Wikipedia articles are social movements which use Facebook. But probably not all notable Facebook groups are social movements. Social movement is in Category:Community building, which is a subcategory of Category:Community development, as is Category:Community organizing. Without reading the Wikipedia articles on these topics further, it is not immediately obvious to me what the differences between "community building", "community organizing" and "community development" are. Building, organizing and development seem like synonyms in this context. Category:Community-based organizations is another subcategory of Category:Community development. I'm wondering if there is a category into which all Facebook groups can be slotted (other than this one of course).

Oh, I see. This category has been included in Category:Virtual communities. A virtual community is a social network. I recall there was a popular movie about Facebook by that name. One thing we can surely all agree on, obviously Facebook is a social networking service. Indeed, that is how it is defined in its lead sentence. But April 6 Youth Movement, a Facebook group, seems to me, is not completely a virtual community. I view it as a real community. The Egyptian government did not virtually fall, no it really did go down in reality—Mubarak is out of power. Avatar, now we're talking virtual, the way I see it. Are some Facebook groups real, while others are virtual? Whatever virtual means. Virtual reality?

What prompted me to come here today is that I'm reading a book which mentions the Luddites, a 19th-century social movement. It's easy to imagine that if Facebook were around back then, the Luddites would have had a Facebook group. Social movement#Social movement and social networking gives an example: the emergence of the Coffee Party first appeared on the social networking site, Facebook. Yet Coffee Party USA has never been part of Category:Facebook groups because the search string "Facebook group" I used to build the category doesn't appear even once in the Coffee Party USA article. This seems somewhat arbitrary to me. But as I said, inclusion in this group depends on whether "Facebook group" is a defining characteristic in the article's lead. – Wbm1058 (talk) 12:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)