Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Packet Clearing House

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 keep. Other than nom, no consensus to delete. (non-admin closure) ––Redditaddict69 ^(talk) ^(contribs) 16:17, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Packet Clearing House

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Non-notable internet buisness Collaboratio (talk) 10:12, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 10:23, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Economics-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 10:23, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I suspect nom is right with regard to notability, but it's a shame, because I suspect they should be. As well as being an absolutely critical non-profit, they generate hoards of quotes and summaries of cyber issues and whenever a DNS issue is in the news. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:06, 5 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - PCH's 2018 audited financials show a budget of $249,918,249, which puts it in the fifty largest NGOs in the United States, out of a total of more than 1.5 million. That's 99.997th percentile, and larger than, for instance, the ACLU, the World Wildlife Foundation, the Public Broadcasting Service, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, Teach for America, or the Humane Society. PCH operates the fourth largest network in the world, exceeded only by Hurricane Electric, Akamai, and Google. That's out of more than 84,000 overall, so 99.995th percentile. Many smaller networks have Wikipedia pages, including Netflix, Yahoo!, and Verizon. More than 400 of the world's top-level domains operate on PCH's infrastructure, including those of more than 120 nations; no other DNS operator even approaches those numbers. PCH operates the only FIPS 140-2 Level 4 DNSSEC signing platform in the world other than that of the DNS root itself, and performs the DNSSEC key management for 51 countries. The donors who support PCH's operations include more than six hundred Internet companies and forty national governments. The criteria for notability of non-profit organizations are: "The scope of their activities is national or international in scale and the organization has received significant coverage in multiple reliable sources that are independent of the organization." PCH provides services in more than 100 countries, and has been the subject of press coverage thousands of times over the past 25 years. Thus, it clearly meets the criteria of notability. Perhaps this is less a question of notability than of the proposer's familiarity with PCH's field of operation? So, I object to the proposed deletion. Bill Woodcock 14:25, 5 August 2019 (PDT)
Bwoodcock, judging by your userpage, you have a close connection with Packet Clearing House. I point you to Wikipedia's policy on conflicts of interest and the fact that "Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion". -- Collaboratio (talk) 12:52, 7 August 2019 (UTC) — Collaboratio (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
Collaboratio, yes, as I make abundantly clear, I am PCH's executive director. Which has no bearing whatsoever on the facts of the matter. Do you dispute the facts, and are you prepared to address them? -- Bwoodcock 16:16, 7 August 2019 (PDT)
Keep - PCH is notable. The SIX has been advised by PCH for over a decade and references a BCP developed by PCH at [1]. RipWikipedia 16:35, 5 August 2019 (PDT) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that RipWikipedia (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
Keep - PCH is notable. I humbly request you to remove it from the proposed deletion list. PCH has helped establish many Internet Exchanges across the world by providing operational support, equipments, trainings, etc. PCH also provides resourceful data for many researchers — 202.63.243.83 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
Keep - I stronly disagree with the idea that PCH is not a notable organisation and should be deleted. PCH operates infrastrcuture and services that make the Internet more secure, reliable and robust for everyone, but particularly in underserved areas with large populations. Thanks to PCH's work in partnership with IXP operators in Africa, Latin-America and Asia-Pacific, Internet users can experience a better Internet. As a non-profit, it does not devote resources to marketing and self-promotion which would certainly help in defining the organisation notable. Elgaelo (talk) 10:34, 7 August 2019 (UTC) — Elgaelo (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
Comment - @202.63.243.83, Elgaelo, and RipWikipedia: - the fact that an organisation is helpful or a nonprofit doesn't help make it notable (we'd have loads more charities were that the case). @Bwoodcock:'s reasoning might support a Ignore All Rules justification, but Collaboratio is correct to point out your links to make sure you comply with PaidCOI obligations - doing so is not cause to snap back. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:51, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nosebagbear, well, do facts matter, or does only who states the facts matter? Again, there are two criteria: "The scope of their activities is national or international in scale and the organization has received significant coverage in multiple reliable sources that are independent of the organization." Is there anyone who's seriously suggesting that operations in more than a hundred countries is not "national or international in scale," or that the New York Times, Reuters, the Christian Science Monitor, WIRED, Dan Rather, The Washington Post, NPR, Newsweek, Network World, CNet, the CBC, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Moscow Times, ACM Queue, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, the Straits Times, ZDNet, AsiaOne, Computerworld, Mainichi Daily News, Politica Digital, InformationWeek, ITWire, IEEE Spectrum, Businessweek, Pew, Heise, and France24 are not independent of PCH? If not, can we consider the matter settled again? Every minute spent feeding trolls is a minute we're not serving our constituents. -- Bwoodcock 22:17, 7 August 2019 (PDT)

@Bwoodcock: - if you can link to even just 2 of those sources where Sig Cov is satisfied then the AfD is functionally done right now, which would be great. I couldn't find any cases in sources like these where Significant Coverage and independent (so no press releases (not that PCH does many of them) and nothing from a PCH staff member (including their interview answers). And no participant here is a troll, so calling them such is not particularly helpful. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:46, 8 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nosebagbear, here is ZDNet coverage of the opening of our first DNSSEC key management facility in 2011, and New York Times coverage of the acceleration of our root-server infrastructure defense campaign in 2012. Bwoodcock 08:52, 8 August 2019 (PDT)

Bwoodcock - the first one just links me to a list of most recent articles that don't seem to immediately relate to PCH. The 2nd one is a broken link, but I could use it to find your desired link here. Only a bit of the content directly applies to PCH as vs a general consideration of the threat, but I'm already leaning to be pro-retention - if the zdnet source is better I'd be happy enough to be Keep. I've not been able to find the specific article by targeted google searches Nosebagbear (talk) 16:25, 8 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nosebagbear, fixed links, sorry, too many different wiki syntaxes floating around in my head. With the anonymous attack, the structure of the press coverage was, itself, a significant portion of the deterrence effort. The goal wasn't to gain publicity for PCH, it was to deter the attack. Bwoodcock 09:57, 8 August 2019 (PDT)

Keep. There are available sources that support this article's notability.

Packet Clearing House has vital internet properties some of which are critical net infrastructure:

Packet Clearing House is an expert in DNS matters in the news :

They have been party to serious hacks:

Note the Quad9 DNS service in partnership with IBM:

Packet Clearing House has profiles at USAID, ProPublica, and Bloomberg

Berkman Center has paper archives on both PCH and its founder

https://cyber.harvard.edu/ixp/library.htm

Ocaasi^{t | c} 17:32, 8 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What makes a source - The vast majority of the sources above only contain PCH-related content because they're citing a paper for a specific fact or because the exec director is providing a quote or some information. For purposes here, that doesn't aid proving notability, and makes it harder to pick out the 2 or 3 that are needed. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:38, 8 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ocaasi, thank you for the leg-work; quite a few of those were new to me. FWIW, the Bloomberg one is mostly just factually incorrect. Nosebagbear, the two I picked I picked for the reason that each documented (however poorly) ongoing international projects with budgets of more than $10M/year for which we're exclusively responsible. In one case key management infrastructure, in the other, a specific campaign of cyber-defense deterrence and resilience-augmentation. The down-side of "independent journalism" is that it's often not clear enough to decipher what's going on through the journalist's hurry and hazy understanding. So we work with what we get. Bwoodcock 14:38, 8 August 2019 (PDT)
Weak Keep - I remain unsure about the sourcing, but there's certainly some there (plus, non-notable organisations can get some mentions but aren't usually asked for dozens of quotes by some of the most reliable soures going). On top of that, there are also the IAR reasoning considered further up. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:01, 8 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So, can we consider this settled, and someone pull the notice from the PCH page? Bwoodcock 18:23, 10 August 2019 (PDT)

@Bwoodcock: - AfDs have to run for at least a week in almost all circumstances. We're coming up to that, at which case an uninvolved closer will take a look at this discussion - participants in the AfD can't close it amongst themselves. They'll probably discount some of the earlier discussions, since it isn't policy-supported, but they'll probably still judge the consensus as Keep, given the agreement around the references. They may decide to extend the discussion if they think we're failing at supporting our reasoning with accepted policy. Nosebagbear (talk) 01:35, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nosebagbear, thanks, I hadn't seen the one-week timeline. Bwoodcock 19:27, 10 August 2019 (PDT)

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.