There has been a recent intensification in the trend of deleting software-related articles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Software). I think this is a useful enterprise, in order to declutter Wikipedia of dead projects or software with very little information to go about it.
Among those deletions there have been cases of articles on active software projects, with large user bases, being deleted on grounds of lack of notability (e.g. [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foswiki]]).
In order to assess notability, I'm wondering about the particular situation of open-source software. OSS benefits from instant verifiability, in that anyone can download the code and check the claims in the article. Sure, an editor writing in detail about their discoveries this way would constitute WP:OR. On the other hand, fact checking in comparison tables simply requires referencing the software's documentation, or live demos - see [[Comparison of JavaScript frameworks]].
Often, the size of developer base, and automatically-generated statistics about the project longevity and activity can be found on sites such as Ohloh (example for [[Foswiki]] - https://www.ohloh.net/projects/foswiki) or GitHub (example for [[MojoMojo]] - http://github.com/marcusramberg/mojomojo/). Most such software is not the "subject of multiple, reliable, independent, non-trivial, published works", and most can never be. For example, the [[Mediawiki]] article does not satisfy these criteria, but nobody doubts its notability.
Having in mind the above, what do fellow editors think about open-source software under active development and with a sizable developer community and user base: can it satisfy [[Wikipedia:Inherent notability]]?
Best regards, Dan Dascalescu ([[User:Dandv]])
On Sat, 28 Mar 2009, Dan Dascalescu wrote:
Among those deletions there have been cases of articles on active software projects, with large user bases, being deleted on grounds of lack of notability (e.g. [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foswiki]]).
Oh, ick. That has several problems, some of which have been endemic: -- The ban on canvassing for votes and the "it's not a vote" mantra is used to keep people who are knowledgeable but don't regularly edit Wikipedia from participating. (And it's been misused, even then; vote canvassing is a reason to ignore a headcount, but it's not a reason not to pay attention to the *arguments* and *evidence* from the newcomers. Arguments and evidence are just as good whether they come from canvassing or not.) -- The claim that a forked software project doesn't inherit notability. While obviously a forked project doesn't inherit notability every time, there are circumstances where using any smidgen of common sense we should realize that it does, but notability has thrown away common sense long ago. I think a free software fork of a project that is notable but has been taken proprietary, where most of the developers moved to the free project, is by any sane standard notable. -- The requirement for third party reliable sources for software projects done over the Internet is broken. People don't generally write books or even cnn.com articles about free software projects except for the *very* biggest ones. (And why are we limiting it to reliable sources anyway? Unreliable sources are no good to establish facts, but they should be fine for notability. For instance, if Rush Limbaugh talks for weeks about your software project, it's probably notable.) -- The whole notability thing boils down to one of the same problems that (yes, again) got spoiler warnings deleted. Deleting something via rules which demand its deletion effectively prevents people interested in the original article from stopping the deletion--they won't be there for the discussion that creates the rules, so the first time they'll know about the rule is when it's used on them, at which point it's too late to actually do anything about it.
"Dan Dascalescu" ddascalescu+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote in message news:3561cc6d0903280046y63c1eae4y5b2c48d23075205d@mail.gmail.com... (...)
[[Wikipedia:Inherent notability]]?
(...)
How about [#Redirect http://bugzilla.sourceforge.net/wiki/WHATEVER], an external redirection?
I said:
How about [#Redirect http://bugzilla.sourceforge.net/wiki/WHATEVER], an external redirection?
That link does not actually work. I was just guessing that sourceforge actually has resources to set up a wiki.
Relisting in hope to gain more discussion.
Wikipedia is currently missing a standard of notability for free open source software. I wrote a proposal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Notability_of_free_ope... and would like to know your opinion.
Thank you, Dan Dascalescu [[User:Dandv]]
There's one point worth mentioning here: your actual suggested policy (found at the end of that p.) is:
While maintaining articles on FOSS software may be desirable, at the same time Wikipedia is not a directory, and only active FOSS projects with 3rd party references should be listed. Abandoned FOSS projects may be kept if more stringent standards of notability are met.
I think the distinction between presently active and cancelled projects to be a very bad way to go. If there is any one principle that has been helpful in helping articles on less popular subjects at Wikipedia, its that notability does not go away.
It might even be particularly perverse for this particular topic. There is usually no great difficulty finding information on the web about currently active software projects. It's the ceased ones where Wikipedia can be the only accessible source of information. At any rate, I at least became first interested in Wikipedia for information on extinct or almost extinct programming languages.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 12:58 AM, Dan Dascalescu ddascalescu+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Relisting in hope to gain more discussion.
Wikipedia is currently missing a standard of notability for free open source software. I wrote a proposal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Notability_of_free_ope... and would like to know your opinion.
Thank you, Dan Dascalescu [[User:Dandv]]
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