Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 February 14

Alice (programming language) (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Given the recent débacle on programming languages deletionism, Alice ML should be reevaluated.

— Leandro GFC Dutra (talk) 12:52, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete: Plenty of readily available high quality citations on google scholar [1] Imprecisekludge (talk) 16:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse, allowing recreation - No matter how much I personally disliked the deletion spree, the DRV rationale borders on nonsense and the consensus was very clear. Given that it seems (from the AfD) that there is more than one Alice programming language and there is evidence of notability of at least one of the two, I'd say no problem if someone rewrites an article with the same title with evidence of notability. --Cyclopia^talk 18:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The other language/environment already has an article at Alice (software). --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm at a loss as to how all votes to keep outside of the nominator counts as a clear consensus (as noted by Calathan). -- Imprecisekludge (talk) 21:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Keep#1 -- "use Google"
    • Keep#2 -- "nom is incompetent"
    • Keep#3 -- "here is a list of articles specifically referring to AliceML, and nom is a vandal" -- only (semi-)good !vote
    • Keep#4 -- "use Google"
    • Keep#5 -- "nom is saboteur"
    • Keep#6 -- "look at all these refs that have nothing to do with the article subject"
    • That's how. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Multiple commentators cited good sources that referred to the correct Alice language. Not all such links were clearly marked directly next to keep votes, but they did exist. I'll grant that certain voters were somewhat splenetic, and I can understand how that would cloud one's judgement. --Imprecisekludge (talk) 22:10, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and relist - While I understand that in general AFDs should be closed based on the strength of arguements, deletion at AFD requires a consensus, and in most cases I don't think it is reasonable to consider a single person's opinion as a "consensus" even if his arguements were the strongest. Given that no one at all agreed with the nominator in that AFD, I don't think it was reasonable to close the debate as a consensus to delete. With the confusion over what the subject was, not many people actually discussed the real subject of the article, so perhaps relisting would allow more people to discuss the real subject of the article. Calathan (talk) 18:20, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to nc A) I don't see a good discussion in that AfD, but I certainly don't see a consensus to delete. (so per Calathan in effect) B) I am seeing a fair number of articles that use, cite, and in some cases describe Alice ML ([[2]]). It does seem to be used by a fairly small set of folks, but the functional languages community is pretty small, that doesn't make their publications unreliable or unsuitable for WP:N. Further, there appears to be decent documentation at a number of academic institutions. I can certainly see this being viewed as not enough, but I don't think this AfD was clear enough to override all that. Hobit (talk) 18:23, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh, it's clear that the nomination in the DrV is bogus, but let's not derail the discussion and rather treat the nomination as a bad !vote. Hobit (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - Someone keeps recreating the page, so I think maybe it needs to be re-deleted and create protected until this deletion review concludes. Calathan (talk) 18:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete: Alice ML is highly notable, there are dozens of references and citations related to the language. It is hugely influential. I respectful ask that editors not familiar with programming languages and computer science bow out of this debate. Relevant: http://www.archive.org/details/20060408-jscott-wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elblanco (talk • contribs) 18:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I deleted the article and protected it based on the AFD result, but I will be happy to unprotect and reinstate if the consensus here is to recreate (and it seems to be headed that way). I have no opinion on the merits of the deletion. NawlinWiki (talk) 19:09, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete: There was no consensus; there wasn't even a single vote to delete. I know consensus is about the strength of the arguments, not a simple count of votes, but it's quite a stretch to call the view of one person in a group of seven "consensus". Zwilson (talk) 19:17, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Alice ML is a significant for a number of reasons. To quote [1], "There is little other work on type-safe marshalling for ML-like languages, and almost none that deals with dynamic type equality across programs in the presence of abstract types. A notable exception is the Alice language of Rossberg et. al." The paper [2] is a model of Alice's futures, and one of few formal presentations of futures in functional programming languages. Some other aspects of the language are probably significant, if additional references are required. As for the discussion itself, it seemed the arguments for deletion mostly revolved around claims of the lack of reliable sources, while diverging from WP:RS by claiming Ph.D theses are not peer-reviewed, rejecting peer-reviewed articles for not meeting an unspecified citation count. 20:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.17.107.169 (talk)
• Allow recreation Something of a meta argument, but the fact that sources apparently exist is insufficient - they need to be in the article. Undeleting the article results in the same issues being apparent, with no real motivation for making the effort to ensure the appropriate references are added (any AfD will be met with the same harassment of the nominator, and DRV made to host the same arguments). I am also rather disinclined to have WP:N deprecated. A recreated article, with references, is fine - as long as there are contributors not scared of a little work. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's not WP policy. WP:N is not to delete articles that need work, it is to delete articles that are *not notable*. Policy is to restore the article, tag it as requiring further citation, and wait. If the work is not done, then (maybe) AfD again. In any case, discussion about what sources were and were not cited in the article is rather difficult until the article is restored in some form. -- Imprecisekludge (talk) 21:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yeah, I'm a bit surprised by LessHeard vanU's comments. I suspect we are heading that way (sadly IMO), but we aren't there yet either in policy or day-to-day reality. Hobit (talk) 22:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete on the grounds of both process and the notability of the article. On the grounds of process: as others have stated, there was no consensus to delete; the original proposer put the AfD forward, and all comments were for Keep, but the closing admin discounted every reason in favour. Some of the reasons in favour of a Keep decision were personal attacks, and so not legitimate arguments, some mixed personal attacks and legitimate arguments, and some were legitimate arguments; it is clear in this case that consensus was not reached. On the grounds of notability: in the original AfD, the proposer replied to evidence of notability in the form of conference publications and substantial mentions in peer-reviewed publications by rebutting them on several grounds. Let's consider the 'Alice through the looking glass' publication. The proposer claims that the place the paper was presented is 'third-tier' and that they aren't indexed in one particular source, namely the ACM Digital Library. The ACM Digital Library only indexes journal articles published by the ACM - so the claim that anything no in the ACM Digital Library is not notable roughly equivalent to saying, for example, that anything not originally published by News Corporation is not notable. This is an incorrect interpretation of Wikipedia policy. WP:N requires that there are reliable sources for a given article; WP:RS says that 'Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications' and 'Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field' with a list of conditions. The last author on the Alice in the Looking Glass article is very clearly an expert in the field; see [3], and so the paper is a reliable source according to WP:RS. There is therefore no requirement that articles be peer reviewed. The Alice through the Looking Glass article could be considered a primary source (although the question of whether a source is primary or secondary is blurred for research not based on carrying out experiments). It is therefore worth including some papers which review Alice ML in the notability analysis. The Alice through the Looking Glass paper is cited 35 times according to Google Scholar, including in Introduction to Concurrency in Programming Languages. In summary, taking the arguably primary and the definite secondary sources together, the requirements for notability are very clearly met, and the closing of the original AfD was flawed. A1kmm (talk) 22:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus / keep While the votes could have been better phrased, there was no consensus for deletion and reliable and verifiable sources that were directly relevant to the article were provided and referenced, and these sources don't need to be peer reviewed to be acceptable. Alansohn (talk) 01:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and troutslap the closing admin for blatantly ignoring the consensus of the discussion, also ignoring the valid sources that were presented in some of the comments, giving a misleading close rationale that gives the false impression that no valid sources were presented, and allowing the personal attacks that were also present in some of the comments to sway his judgement. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:16, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete. Clearly overwhelming consensus to keep. Steven Walling 03:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nemerle (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Overturn and undelete: I will personally add in source, such as this one:

• Here is just one very long article on Nemerle in a Russian magazine

#1 RSDN Magazine 2006

Note that RSDN Magazine is a highly-ranked Russian peer-reviewed publication accepted by the ВАК (Higher Attestation Commission) of the Russian Federation as a journal in which a publication is necessary for obtaining a PhD degree in Russia.

Reference: [4] List of such publications: [5] (RSDN is #2111 in the list). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.13.115 (talk) 08:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The deletion discussion was hijacked by Reddit readers, which became the focus rather than the deletion discussion itself [???]. A cursory search through Google seems to suggest that Nemerle has some notability (World News, several books and articles, and plenty of discussion on Stack Overflow). I do not know much about the subject, but I think this article merits a discussion that is not centered on vote canvassing. AZ _t 05:20, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't informed the nominator/etc about this, because redditors are watching his edits, and I'd rather avoid a repeat of the AfD. AZ _t 05:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Given the sheer amount of fanboy fallout that is currently going on, I think that is an impossibility. –MuZemike 05:30, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not exactly fanboyism or sock-puppetry, as far as I am aware. Here's the Reddit discussion thread - there's a few good points raised (if you look beyond the initial discussions on the nominator). In particular, the posters there have no affiliation with Nemerle. AZ _t 05:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The old article lacked particularly valid sources, but not due to a lack of such sources existing. There are at least few relevant, qualifying publications that could be used. See: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=nemerle the number of qualifying sources may be on the light side, but there is more than enough to justify a short article. SCVirus (talk) 06:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• permit re-creation, the substantial items on GScholar are papers by Michał Moskal himself, but there see to be about 50 citations to his work, usually in the context of comparing it along with well-known programming languages, e.g. "The .NET platform supports a wide range of 'native' languages (C#, VB.NET, and functional languages like F# and Nemerle just to name a few)."[6] or "For example, it may be written using X++, SQL, TSQL, C#, F#, C++, C, Pascal, Visual Basic, Java, JavaScript, Delphi, Eiffel, Nemerle, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Visual FoxPro, Lua, variations thereof,or any other programming language or combination of languages" from a US Patent App. [7]. I think that is evidence of a reasonable degree of notability. And see [8] from IEEE--a citation like that is significant. DGG ( talk ) 06:44, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Agreed. Just based on the fact that Mono, a highly popular open-source .NET implementation, supports Nemerle suggests its notability. The deletion requester seems to not fully understand that the fact that an article doesn't have good citations does not make its subject non-notable. Just looking at the AfD was pretty depressing, to be honest, given just how easy it is to see that the subject is notable with some cursory searches on the web. I have informed the admin who approved the deletion, but he has not yet returned my message. In any case, I support the reinstatement of the article, and if it is reinstated, I will work personally to improve its citations if I need to. Jwkpiano1 (talk) 07:22, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Google Scholar has 95 references to the language, mostly self-hosted or in other non-peer reviewed venues, but including some in high-impact PL journals. For example, the first reference supplied by "Kochetkov.vladimir" in the AfD was in ACM TOPLAS (high impact) with a long mention of Nemerle, saying of it that it is the first language to achieve a homogeneous embedding of syntax extensions through LISP-style macros. Kochetkov also pointed to the Fx7 solver, implemented in Nemerle, which is is regarded as an interesting and significant new technology in many new publications in automated theorem proving. I find the following chorus of opinions that the subject has no reliable sources disappointing, which I take to be a reaction to the influx of outsiders. As a heuristic, PL languages that return a lot of results on Lambda the Ultimate (e.g., for Nemerle), are quite likely to have sources of sufficient quality. Overturn and undelete: The number of reliable sources I found for the article is not high, but I agree with SCVirus there are enough to support a useful article. — Charles Stewart (talk) 07:44, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn and undelete: Something that was not considered during the pre-delete discussion: Nemerle qualifies as notable under Wikipedia:Notability_(software). Nemerle is "discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field", it has "been recognized as having historical or technical significance by reliable sources." While some of the sources cited in support of Nemerle being notable were relatively informal, like the workshop paper, the essay state that "it is not unreasonable to allow relatively informal sources for free and open source software, if significance can be shown." — gmarceau (talk) 08:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Do not undelete, but allow for recreation with reliable sources, none of which has been provided as of yet. Corvus cornix_talk 08:58, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete: Are you kidding? Taken from AfD:

Scientific (non-RSDN) articles which bases at Nemerle, or uses it/researches arround it, or have a references to it:

1. Domain specific language implementation via compile-time meta-programming (PDF)
2. E-matching for Fun and Profit (PDF) (Fx7 project, mentioned in article was moved here)
3. Rocket-fast proof checking for SMT solvers (PDF)
4. Solving quantified verification conditions using satisfiability modulo theories (PDF)
5. Evolving a DSL Implementation (PDF)
6. An ECMAScript Compiler for the .NET Framework Isn't freely avaiable (PDF presentation that can be found is not an article itself), but references Nemerle (check the "References" tab at ACM article's page).
7. Efficient E-Matching for SMT Solvers (PDF)
8. Using Dynamic Symbolic Execution to Improve Deductive Verification Isn't freely avaiable, but references Nemerle (check the "References" tab at ACM article's page).
9. Comparative Study of DSL Tools (PDF)
10. Edit and Verify (PDF)
11. Fast Quantifier Reasoning With Lazy Proof Explication (PDF)

Some significant projects, written in Nemerle.

1. Russian Mathematics Equation Search Engine and it's international interface
2. Ready to use Ruby On Rails derriviative for .NET platform

--Kochetkov.vladimir (talk)

Also, there is an article on InfoQ: [9] and it is noted in another one: [10]

Generative and transformational techniques in software engineering II: international summer school, GTTSE 2007, Braga, Portugal

Tools and algorithms for the construction and analysis of systems: 14th international conference

• Overturn and undelete. Many sources have been found and consensus was strongly against deletion. Shouldn't have been brought to AfD, and SarekofVulcancertainly shouldn't have deleted it. Allowing recreation is insufficient, as why would you make people go through the extra effort of recreating it when you can simply expand and source the original? Throwaway85 (talk) 09:25, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete. Plenty of reliable sources, as per this discussion, and as per the AfD. There was line noise there from angry folks (as there is here) but that shouldn't drown out the signal. -- Imprecisekludge (talk) 22:38, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete; reliable sources exist, and there's no reason to be prejudiced against the original content that was there prior to deletion. Johnleemk | Talk 10:21, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn to keep per sources presented and DGG. --Cyclopia^talk 11:37, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete. Wikipedia is not Britannica. Notability must be considered in the most specific terms, in this case, for software. Allow for expansion from what existed.

— Leandro GFC Dutra (talk) 11:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• +1 On overturn and undelete, will collaborate on making the article more solid, if necessary. Rodrigob (talk) 12:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete um, have you seen how many other articles are pointing to this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Nemerle 85.170.164.12 (talk) 12:50, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Considering that Nermerle is included in {{.NET}}, I'm not sure that's as indicative as you think it is. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Roughly the top two thirds of the AfD are taken up by attacks on the nominator and bland, non-specific, non-policy-based assertions for keep. Given this, it's hard to fault Sarek for closing as delete. However, I do not see that those favoring deletion, towards the bottom of the discussion, took the time to adequately determine if the sources Kochetkov.vladimir found (reposted above) amount to notability. Overturn to no consensus. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:47, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete: The removal of this article does not make Wikipedia better. Nemerle is notable for having features not found in previous languages, especially structural macros in a non-homoiconic language. From a programming language design perspective, it is more notable than say... C#. Zwilson (talk) 19:07, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Allow recreation Something of a meta argument, but the fact that sources apparently exist is insufficient - they need to be in the article; this article had a sources request for two years. Undeleting the article results in the same issues being apparent, with no real motivation for making the effort to ensure the appropriate references are added (any AfD will be met with the same harassment of the nominator, and DRV made to host the same arguments). I am also rather disinclined to have WP:N deprecated. A recreated article, with references, is fine - as long as there are contributors not scared of a little work. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • As with my comments above, that's not WP policy. WP:N is not to delete articles that need work, it is to delete articles that are *not notable*. Policy is to restore the article, tag it as requiring further citation, and wait. If the work is not done, then (maybe) AfD again. There's motivation for fixing/improving articles beyond fear of immediate deletion, I would hope. The entire existence of wikipedia would seem to be a constructive proof of this. In any case, discussion about what sources were and were not cited in the article is rather difficult until the article is restored in some form. -- Imprecisekludge (talk) 22:34, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rationale for Deletion

For my own education, I will attempt to evaluate this article per each criterion for deletion as listed on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism.

• Some articles complicate indexing. For example, having articles on the many unnoteworthy individuals named John Anderson makes it difficult for readers to find the article about the notable U.S. presidential candidate with that name.

OK. There's only one Nemerle, so, +0 for deletion.

• Similarly, the presence of obscure subjects in lists and timelines makes it more difficult for readers to find key people and events.

People would likely find the Nemerle page via Google or through a mention in a separate page, which probably wouldn't be that hard to follow. +0, then.

• Some articles cover topics too obscure for the wiki process to work. For example, a topic where only a few dozen people have firsthand knowledge (or any knowledge at all) is unlikely to see expansion or error correction by anyone but the original author and instead may become filled with incorrect information. It is arguably better to find no result in Wikipedia or an obviously incomplete result than outright incorrect information.

There's some risk here, if Nemerle is a very obscure language. Ironically my first reflex was to go check Wikipedia to see how detailed its article was, as a gauge of obscurity. However, in the case of a programming language, I disagree that it's better to find no results. If you want more information than provided by first-party sources on an obscure programming language, some outdated information is better than none. It at least would give you something to go on. But I can at least see where they're coming from, so +1 here.

• Deletionists may believe that the presence of uninformative articles damage the project's usefulness and credibility, particularly when casual visitors encounter them through Internet search engines or Wikipedia's "random page" or "recent changes."

If we're worried about "norms" judging Wikipedia's credibility, maybe we should think about the stupendous amounts of care and attention given to articles like "Dyson_spheres_in_popular_culture", a list of sci-fi books and movies that contain vague references to a nonexistent technology. I think anyone would be hard pressed to claim that Dyson spheres in popular culture is a topic more credible or valuable to human knowledge than a real programming language that has generated discussions on LtU. +0 for deletion.

• Some deletionists argue that allowing small, uninformative articles to remain promotes poorly-written "drive-by" articles, and that by deleting them writers will be more likely to make informative, well-written articles for their first edit.

Based on my own experience, this is simply incorrect. If someone makes a "drive-by" article and it gets deleted, they are 100% more likely to get discouraged and never come back to Wikipedia. +0 for deletion.

• Articles on obscure topics, even if they are in principle verifiable, tend to be very difficult to verify. Usually, the more obscure, the harder to verify. Actually verifying such articles, or sorting out verifiable facts from exaggeration and fiction, takes a great deal of time. Not verifying them opens the door to fiction and advertising. This also leads to a de facto collapse of the "no original research policy", which is one of the fundamental Wikipedia policies.

This is pretty irrelevant, since all of the verifiable information is available on the internet. +0 for deletion.

• For many subjects related to fictional characters or works, it's very difficult to ensure that an article would portray the subject from a real-world perspective. The most high-profile example of this was that at one time Wikipedia had an article for every single individual Pokemon, even though most of them exist as little more than minor actors in video games: that's because it is easy to write whole articles from the perspective of a video game guide, or from an in-universe perspective which treats plot elements of a TV show as real. Because of this, deletionists argue that the content itself simply isn't appropriate for an encyclopedia, whereas an external wiki which had different rules on how to present content would be ideal.

Irrelevant, +0.

• Less notable articles (minor concepts, South Park episodes, etc.) are more likely to result in articles that are OR.

I don't know what "OR" means. +0.

• Less notable articles may distract attention from improving important topics (big things in history for example) because energy is devoted to video game cruft.

The people who make edits and read obscure PL articles would not redirect their energy to historical articles if the PL ones could not exist. +0.

• Because Wikipedia is not paper it can utilize things like section redirects to cover even the most obscure subjects without giving each its own free-standing article.

This makes sense, but no one ever moves obscure PL info into a parent article; it just gets deleted entirely. +0.

Ok. So, out of all of these points, only 1 of them even seemed vaguely relevant to this article's deletion.

Am I missing something? Could someone please step in and explain why it made sense to remove these languages? By the deletionists' own criteria, I don't really see how it makes sense. I have no vote/nomination, since I am not really an experienced Wikipedia contributor, but I was hoping for more clarity. Max (talk) 16:59, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice straw-man argument. Too bad the deletion in this case is based on actual Wikipedia policy... 68.49.236.236 (talk) 18:07, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't get the impression that "inclusionists" are claiming that any of these articles meet WP:N. I thought the debate was whether WP:N is worth enforcing in these situations. After all, Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules is a policy, too. The deletionists' criteria seem to address the question of "When is it appropriate to include an article even if its notability is indeterminate or unverifiable".

To put it differently, I believe that the philosophical arguments against any WP:N deletion can be summed up as "This article ought to be included despite violating WP:N, because its presence is a net positive to Wikipedia." The counter-argument would be those criteria which I reproduced above. For example, "No, it is a net negative, because it introduces too much ambiguity and confusion in our namespace." In that sense, I don't feel that I was attacking a straw man at all.

Incidentally, I feel like your tone is more sarcastic than necessary. It's obvious that I am biased towards inclusionism, but I am sincerely interested in understanding the individual motivation for deleting these articles. In other words: If WP:N did not exist, what other reasons would exist for deleting them? Max (talk) 18:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You misinterpret IAR. It has never been an invitation to actually ignore the rules, except in those cases where the rules are wrong. Unless you have an extremely good reason not to, follow the rules.

I thought the gist of inclusionism--as it relates to obscure programming languages--is that, for articles such as Nemerle & Alice ML, WP:N is wrong. I am open to being corrected if I have misinterpreted that as well. How does one determine whether a rule is "wrong", as you put it? Max (talk) 19:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the deletionism/inclusionism stuff are essays. They are informative, yes, but do not carry weight. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm certainly aware that the essays are not policies, but essays about the policies. Is there another, more appropriate, forum for discussing the merits and flaws of policies themselves? Because, if Nemerle (for example) is to be included, then the rationale for inclusion is certainly that WP:N falls short, and the auspices of WP:IAR highlight it as an article whose presence is a net positive for Wikipedia despite its subject's lack of notability. I really would appreciate a response to the question I posed above, as it would clear up a lot of the misconceptions I seem to be struggling with. I will reproduce my question here: If WP:N did not exist, what other reasons would exist for deleting them? Max (talk) 19:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, for the Dyson spheres, see WP:OTHERSTUFF. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ironically, I feel WP:OTHERSTUFF is a bit of a "straw-man" argument in the context of my post. I wasn't saying that Dyson spheres in popular fiction should not be included, or that its inclusion indicates that obscure programming languages ought to be included as well. My comment about the Dyson spheres article was specifically in the scope of that deletion criterion, "... the presence of uninformative articles damage the project's usefulness and credibility..." Dyson spheres are simply one example; there are thousands of articles about fantastical subjects, from jedi knights to the Predator, which do little to document subjects of real import. And that's fine! My surprise comes from the apparently disproportionate amount of attention paid to certain subjects, such as obscure programming languages, which is the only subject I happen to have an emotional attachment to. Over the years, I am surprised to see some very "crufty" articles withstand the test of time, while others are instantly purged. Max (talk) 18:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete: This is clearly a case of vandalism against an otherwise notable programming language. Relevant: http://www.archive.org/details/20060408-jscott-wikipedia— Preceding unsigned comment added by Elblanco (talk • contribs)

Please assume good faith, Elblanco. Accusing good faith editors of vandalism is a big no-no around here, which can earn you mandatory vacations from Wikipedia. Cheers. lifebaka++ 19:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't appear that these articles *were* deleted in good faith. The languages in question are clearly notable (which is a red herring since notability is merely a guideline, not a rule), the articles were well written, the consensus in the AfD discussion was against deletion, 20-30 seconds of google searching per language would have informed anybody of these basics (there are dozens of references, papers, citations, etc. for each), yet they were still deleted. It's clear that the moderation process is broken w/r to deletion and that the editors were not acting in accordance to the AfD discussion. W/r to vandalism, vandalism can be modification or destruction of otherwise good articles. These were destroyed for no particular reason. Vandalism can also be unintentional. I believe that the original AfD markings were unintentional by somebody ignorant of the topics. If the standards that were used to delete these articles were applied to all of wikipedia, we'd be left with articles on God, Ronald Reagan and Brittany Spears. Elblanco (talk) 19:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Britney who...? Gosh. These "fan-cruft" articles are just cropping up all over the place. To AfD with it, I suppose!... ;-) ^[1] Max (talk) 19:34, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)ElBlanco, while I may have sympathy for some of your points, here is some piece of practical advice:

• As already told, calling good faith actions you disagree with "vandalism" is a breach of WP:CIVIL and it is taken pretty seriously here.
• External links to people's opinions on WP may be useful but are usually not particularly impressive here; what counts more here is editorial consensus and guidelines/policies
• Try to assume a less confrontational attitude, chill out and be prepared to compromise. Clashes of this kind are not new, and a solution/compromise may be found, but newbie editors that react emotionally and look like driving an agenda are prime targets for sanctions. You don't want that to happen. Stay as cool as possible. WP is an exercise in compromise, diplomacy and patience, above anything else.

FWIW, it can be difficult for less savvy Wikipedia users to remain civil in these common debates, because it can sometimes feel like the experienced editors are being dismissive or condescending (whether or not that is truly the case). Indeed, policies such as WP:N, WP:OTHERSTUFF, WP:V et. al. are donned by veteran users like utility belts, and create an arsenal of canned responses that can make newbies feel like they are having a frustrating experience with a phone rep reading off of a script rather than a civil debate with a fellow contributor. I believe that experienced editors could do more work to "meet them in the middle," so to speak; to Wikipedia veterans, debates like this are "just another AfD," but it feels, and is, much more personal to some of the people affected by them.

It would be nice to see some experienced editors occasionally engaging in discussion without constantly bringing Wikipedia policies to bear; not because the policies are irrelevant or wrong, but because they are all based on very reasonable conclusions that can--and should--be explained within the context of each given discussion, rather than repeated by rote.

Agreed strongly on the "Chill out" part, though. Wikipedia's collective blood pressure seems to skyrocket sometimes. Max (talk) 19:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Try to familiarize with guidelines, policies and the deletion process.

Hope it helps. --Cyclopia^talk 19:38, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to take it seriously, I am being serious. The deletion of the pages was performed without community consensus, or adherence to the rules. WP:N is a guideline, not a rule, yet that appears to be the only justification used, even though all deleted languages were shown to be notable repeatedly. The entire deletion process has been botched, and now, with a clear consensus to overturn, the articles are *still* not restored and are awaiting what would appear to be an equally arbitrary judgement to overturn as the one used to delete in the first place! Other than overturning and restoring the pages in their entirety, the only compromise available is to unlock that pages and allow them to be reconstituted from scratch.

The reason clashes like this are not new is that the process for deletion is broken, it's subject to the arbitrary whims of individuals not community consensus, votes are not counted, and mere guidelines are used as justification for deleting valuable content from WP. The burden of proof is not on the deletionist, but on the inclusionist. The deletionist in this cases did not prove in any way shape or form that the articles should be deleted, yet extensive documentation and votes were ignored by the editor who did the final deletion -- essentially saying that the evidence for inclusion did not meet his personal feelings! If that's adherence to the process, it's a shamefully broken process that is in clear need of revision.

I, like most people, come to WP for knowledge. To learn something. If I see something I can fix as a random person, I believe that I should be able to do that as per Wikipedia's Raison d'être. I could care less about the bizarre bureaucratic process that self-selected WP editors have crafted that only has to be followed by non-editors (as this example has demonstrated beyond all doubt). Feel free to sanction me or whatever process is put in place to deal with criticism of a broken system, I doubt I'll be contributing to WP any further.

Think for a moment. People make mistakes. people judge hastily; people judge by appearances; people are hyper-critical about things they udon't understand or about things they know very well; people think that coverage in a field is getting too extensive; people don't understand the importance of particular sources or particular types of sources; people react to the way an argument is presented rather than the actual argument; people get impatient; people have a consistent viewpoint that is different from one's own: none of these are signs of evil or conspiracy or bad faith or vandalism or an attempt to harm Wikipedia. We have processes for correcting errors--no decision here is every final. There are instance of bad faith deletions, usually for revenge but sometimes for personal reasons or to make a point, but they are really quite rare and usually quite noticeable. We each of us view things a little differently, and we all know this very well, which is why, except for the most obvious cases, we have the practice of making group decisions . Sometimes there is an unfortunate concurrence of unrepresentative individual views on one side of an argument that do not get corrected, but no group is composed of perfect judges. Sometimes people who care reasonably about something will happen not to get things they way they want them. We try to make this unlikely, but we cannot make this impossible. The only way to always get what you want is to work by yourself--once you make the decision to join a group project, you must realise you will not always find everything the way you would like it. Even our best collective efforts will not reach perfection, and there is no rational expectation that we will always be doing the best possible. Whatever perfect beings there may be in the universe, they don't write encyclopedias. DGG ( talk ) 23:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are instance of bad faith deletions, usually for revenge but sometimes for personal reasons or to make a point ^{[citation needed]} Corvus cornix_talk 23:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn to Keep Adequate reliable and verifiable sources were provided by those arguing for retention and there was no consensus for deletion. Alansohn (talk) 01:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete. Clearly no consensus to delete. Steven Walling 03:06, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete I favor tough interpretation of GNG in relation to bands and websites, and any of the other dime-a-dozen entities which are promoted in articles. However, a programming language is an inherently encyclopedic topic, and the only question should be whether it was something dreamed up last weekend (or otherwise weirdly esoteric), or whether it is receiving serious attention from those working in the field. The sources above show the latter is the case. Johnuniq (talk) 06:40, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A small point, but brainfuck is notable precisely because of how esoteric it is, as well as the fact that it's still Turing-complete. Being esoteric isn't necessarily a knock against a language, so long as there's something legitimately noteworthy about the language. Throwaway85 (talk) 07:26, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete I find the section above labeled Rationale for Deletion to be precisely the point. Wikipedia derives its usefulness in part from the fact that it covers such a broad range of subjects: deleting content without relocating the information without good reason is poor sense. Eamon Nerbonne (talk) 12:07, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• SarekofVulcan's reading of the consensus in that debate strikes me as quite accurate. But, the consensus was wrong. As exhaustively established above, the debate participants failed to investigate the sources deeply enough. Therefore the correct outcome is to allow recreation of this material. Would the closer of this DRV please consider not using the word "overturn". An "overturn" implies that the closer was in error, but he wasn't. It was the debate that was in error. "Allow recreation" is the correct phrasing.

  Let's also be alert to the fact that DRV is not AfD round 2 and many of the arguments presented earlier would not normally permitted here. In this DRV, we have (quite rightly) temporarily set aside our normal DRV behaviour because in this particular case it's in the best interests of the encyclopaedia that, to a certain extent, we re-argue the AfD. Because many participants in this discussion are not DRV regulars, I think our use of WP:IAR should also be explicitly mentioned in the DRV closer's statement. We need to be clear that this is not how we normally conduct deletion reviews but we collectively decided that the circumstances were exceptional.—S Marshall T/C 12:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think the reading of consensus was clearly wrong and swayed by the fact that a number of single-purpose accounts were created by advocates who sometimes didn't grasp wikipedia policies. A good amount of proper sources for notability were posted and ignored. Essentially all sources cited in this discussion were cited in the original, at some point. If I'm not mistaken, allow recreation would only allow recreation. To restore the content that existed, which is the reasonable thing to do, then even if the words may be phrased less diplomatically than you would prefer, the only proper option is Overturn to Keep . -- Imprecisekludge (talk) 16:05, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • "number of single-purpose accounts were created by advocates" it's a conjecture. It's a real people. VladD2 (talk) 22:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's not about diplomacy, it's about what's right. SarekofVulcan is supposed to close the debate that's in front of him. He's not supposed to examine the sources for himself and decide what he thinks—and if he'd done that I would have been the first to suggest overturning him. But he didn't, he read the debate and weighted the arguments raised in that debate as an admin should. It is not Sarek's fault that users participating in the debate didn't pay sufficiently close attention to the sources in front of them.

      "Allow recreation" could be on the basis of, for example, a userfied version of the deleted article. Or the DRV closer could say "Restore" rather than "Overturn". I don't agree that it's necessary to say "overturn" here and I also don't think it's appropriate.—S Marshall T/C 17:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

      • The debate had all the relevant sources, all the relevant arguments, and a significant amount of keep votes. The only correct and relevant argument (that there are sources that prove notability) was both made and sourced. I'm at a loss as to what wikilawyering notion of mod responsibilities could possibly justify deletion. On the issue of "Overturn", you'll note that there are precisely four options given (above) for comments in a deletion review: endorse, relist, list, and overturn. "Restore" and "allow recreation" are not among those. Either there needs to be a broader decision made to alter the deletion review process, or you need to bring your understanding of the options on the table in line with the actual options on the table. -- Imprecisekludge (talk) 18:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • • When I use "restore" or "permit recreation" as arguments my intent is to avoid the possible implication of an overturn, that it is in some degree a censure to the closing admin, and I think others use them similarly. There's a dual purpose at DR, to ensure we treat articles correctly and also, sometimes, to reprimand aberrant closing admins. The discussion usually makes it clear what's intended. We do not want to discourage people from bringing things here that need correction because they do not want to censure erroneous, but good faith closings. The way I , at least, look at Wikipedia process in general, is that we want to do things right, and encourage people do do things right, but to accomplish this as gently & peacefully & cooperatively as possible. The policy upon which I base this is that WP is not a Bureaucracy. DGG ( talk ) 19:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • (edit conflict) x2 — That's an understandable viewpoint, Imprecisekludge, and I respect it even if I disagree. I'm afraid I think I need to take it apart and explain point by point.

        1. "[The argument that there are sources that prove notability]" was both made and sourced. That argument was indeed well-made, but subsequent debate participants did not find it convincing and argued against it. Those subsequent participants were wrong, but wrong though they were, that's how the argument went.

        2. "...there are precisely four options." That's true, but we're not in a normal deletion review. In examining this closure it was necessary to go quite some way beyond the normal DRV process. What we had to do was to virtually re-argue the AfD from scratch, and that's not normally permitted either. We've gone far beyond the tick-box options that DRV normally offers and we're into the vague region where we do what's in the encyclopaedia's best interests.

        3. My "notion of mod responsibilities" doesn't include examining the sources for themselves and making up their own minds. Wikipedia's admin corps are a bunch of generally well-meaning people who normally try to do what's right, but let's face facts:- they're untrained, unqualified, unpaid and virtually unsupervised. Many of them are children. Their remit is not and cannot be to make up their own minds who's right, particularly on a subject where they aren't an expert. The symbol for an administrator is a mop, not a gavel. In other words, administrators aren't judge or jury. They're janitors. All they can do is close the debate as they find it.

        4. "... a significant amount of keep votes." That's not how it works, the !vote count is irrelevant. No matter whether 100 or 1000 or 100000 editors say the same thing, they can still be wrong. And the !vote count is easy to stack. Administrators are ordered to disregard it and assess the way the debate flowed without counting numbers.

        Does this make more sense to you now? There's no point in punishing SarekofVulcan for this, or even seeming to punish him. He closes a lot of debates, and nobody gets it right every single time. This was a close in good faith, on the basis of the debate that SarekofVulcan read. It's not his fault that the debate participants were wrong.—S Marshall T/C 19:18, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

        • Gotta comment on #3 here -- for the record, I've been out of college for 20 years, and I have a short published article on a CS topic. :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:25, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Sorry to drag this out. I very much appreciate your reply. I still think you're wrong however. Of course number of votes is not decisive. But I think you're removing too much responsibility from mods in general here. To execute a consensus, you need to judge what the consensus is. And that means judging the merits of the arguments. So if the right arguments with the right merits are presented, then that's what matters. My contention is that the right arguments with the right merits were presented. You note that other, wrong arguments were also presented. We trust mods to differentiate between the two. Sometimes mods get it wrong and are overturned. I don't think this should be seen as censure. It mixes apples and oranges -- we need to distinguish between overturned and overturned with prejudice. --Imprecisekludge (talk) 20:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • I think you've got a lot more faith in Wikipedia's admin corps than I have. And I think we don't ask them to decide what's right and what's wrong. If administrators could decide that, then what's the point of having an AfD discussion first? If our admins could judge it for themselves, then we needn't bother with all the talking. We could just wait seven days and then an admin would come along and make the right choice. But unfortunately, our admins are more fallible than that, and we can't trust them to know what's right. The way things actually work is that admins decide what the consensus was—a very different thing.

            But on the substantive point, I don't think we're disagreeing. There's no cause to censure SarekofVulcan, and the word "overturn" refers to the outcome of deleting this material, rather than to the call Sarek made about consensus. Provided that's clear in the close, and provided the material's restored, then both of us should be satisfied.—S Marshall T/C 21:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - people have been creating new, shorter versions of this article. The last thing we need is parallel versions: I have therefore temp-undeleted the version that was deleted at AfD; it can be seen in the history behind the temp-undelete template. Please DO NOT edit it while this debate continues. JohnCD (talk) 19:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since a couple of IPs didn't get the hint, I've fully protected for the duration of the DRV.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete 20:48, 15 February 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.176.92.7 (talk)
• Overturn and undelete Programming language which used in real projecct must be in Wikipedia. Deleting information about programming language make worse Wikipedia. Use the rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules VladD2 (talk) 21:59, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn This is simply a (rare) mistake by SarekOfVulcan. I believe the article should be kept but that fact notwithstanding, the debate should have been closed as "no consensus". Sure, the keep side was a little weak on articulating its point around WP policy but it provided enough bits of evidence to suggest keeping the article and revisiting possible deletion at a later point in time. Pichpich (talk) 22:43, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete - The notability is established. Deletion was mistaken. This discussion is adequate. The Russian source is adequate. The fact that it's in distributions' package trees (no mean feat in some cases!) is indication enough. The fact this many people are participating makes things even clearer. As a programmer, I can see that this is a language of note, and there is no doubt. prat (talk) 23:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and undelete - being among the early-delete-voters on the original AfD, I've (unfortunately too late) got the facts which would've changed my voice to "keep".

As we've discussed in the original AfD, most of the references were the language-related articles that came from the single source, RSDN Magazine, which is undoubtedly a reliable source by itself; but the articles were rejected as an unreliable source for being written by the same person, User:VladD2, a person among the official Nemerle developers, thus the articles could be considered a self-advertising.

Besides these articles, during the AfD we were able to find at least a single independent source, it was Domain specific language implementation via compile-time meta-programming (PDF) (the other sources mentioning Nemerle were proposed by User:Kochetkov.vladimir but contained too little Nemerle coverage to consider them important, but the source above was pretty good and nobody were able to put any doubts on its reliability).

After the AfD, I was informed of the fact that User:VladD2, being the author of the disputable articles and the Nemerle contributor, actually started contributing to the project after the articles were published. I just investigated the official Nemerle code repository and the earlies commit by User:VladD2 is r6363 on June 3, 2006. As seen on the article list, some of the articles in question were published in RSDN Magazine #1-2006 (that went to print in the beginning of 2006), and even published on the site in May 2006, what is earlier than VladD2's code contribution. The newly discovered facts make these articles be considered independent enough, and, together with the pretty notable status of RSDN magazine itself, that makes me reconsider these articles as reliable sources. Together with the “Domain specific language implementation via compile-time meta-programming” article, we have a sufficient independent and reliable coverage of Nemerle, hence again my vote is to overturn an undelete,... and guys, someone please put these good sources into the “References” section :) Honeyman (talk) 02:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and undelete. The stated reason for the delete, that most of the current sources given in the article are not reliable sources, is not a reasonable basis for deletion. The unstated reasons are not clear, but unlikely to be valid. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 04:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]