Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cwm (window manager)

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 no consensus.  Sandstein  20:40, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cwm (window manager) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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The author has removed the notability tag without adding any new sources to the article. Those present seem to be either closely related to the product itself, or are fan blogs, which are generally not WP:RS. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:26, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I am the author of the article, and I don't believe the subject is not notable. There is currently the only WP:RS (as I consider it) on the page — Undeadly (the third-party news site covering mostly OpenBSD-related news) — is referenced twice. The rest of references are the primary sources. If others disagree with me about the question of notability, I would prefer userfication. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 21:34, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please notice, that I've actually extended article, so it is now twice as large as it was and contains twice as many references. While the new references are not WP:RS, as they are blogs, their amount is now considerable, and they are not primary sources. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 16:06, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Userfy. Would not object to early closure of this Afd to reach that end. VictorianMutant^(Talk) 23:22, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:37, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Even if we assume undeadly is a reliable source (I am skeptical of this) WP:GNG requires multiple reliable sources. - MrOllie (talk) 18:20, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Why WP:NSOFT shouldn't apply here? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 12:50, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Which criteria in WP:NSOFT do you think this article meets? - MrOllie (talk) 15:26, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually section 2 option 1 and section 3 options 2, 3. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:33, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Ok, section 2 option one says 'The software is discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field.'. What are the reliable sources (note the plural) that say it is significant in its field? - MrOllie (talk) 20:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  As section 3 suggests, WP:SPS may be considered reliable depending on in-depth coverage. There are several such sources in the article. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:55, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  No, it does not suggest that at all. In fact, in a footnote, section 3 says 'Notability, not existence, must be established by such citations without using WP:Synthesis. Sourceforge, independent project wiki's, and other self-published sites are excluded from this definition.' You may not use self published sites to establish notability. - MrOllie (talk) 20:56, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  The notability is established by Undeadly link, the verifiability - by self published sites as per WP:NSOFT. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:05, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I think it's immensely counter-productive to treat guidelines as inflexible, unerring laws.

From my perspective, minimal "reliable" coverage (by Wikipedia's definition) is hardly a definitive lack of notability in this niche. It should be plainly obvious that the level of coverage for a *nix window manager is likely to be sparse. Small open source projects don't have multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns behind them, nor are there glossy dead-tree publications on newstands about them. Much of the good information on nearly all open source projects tends to come from the authors, mailing lists and blog posts... Sources which nearly invariably fail WP:SPS.

Forgive me, but I'm going to go on a tangent: Policies such as WP:RS have always seemed extremely defensive to me. I understand that's thanks in large part to people who ceaselessly try to find loopholes to insert their own bias into controversial articles through the use of seriously-questionable sources... but cwm isn't an article about a conspiracy theory, pseudoscientific medical treatment, nor a contentious political issue. As such, I don't think it should be held to the letter of such stringent guidelines.

Take Awesome and dwm, for example. Both were taken to AfD, then to DRV... both were train-wrecks, more or less, particularly dwm's first AfD. Aside from being a massive waste of time for all involved, I see the linked examples as doing an excellent job of underlining how the strict application of certain policies and guidelines works very poorly within this particular niche — alienating potential contributors and deleting verifiable content.

There are thousands of articles like this, covering a huge swathe of open source projects and similarly lacking Wikipedia-reliable sources. Should rtorrent, zsh and many other well-known projects also be judged non-notable and deleted for their lack of professional media coverage? Singlemaltscotch (talk) 11:19, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I understand. Your argument is that these kinds of articles don't have reliable sourcing, but we should ignore that? How are we supposed to make the articles verifiable? - MrOllie (talk) 15:26, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In fact WP:V states all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. The definition of reliable, appropriate sources for free software is given in WP:NSOFT. So it's just a question of availability of WP:COMMONSENSE. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:39, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• My argument is that a strict interpretation of WP:RS is far too strong a measure for a topic like this, being best reserved for truly contentious articles with bad-faith editing going on.

In this case, I believe far more discretion is in order. I only noticed WP:NSOFT after writing much of this, but it seems to echo several of my sentiments. Verifiability comes easily to software, as most claims about a given piece of end-user software can be trivially verified or refuted through use of the program. Having the source freely and readily available merely increases the chances of catching any misinformation.

It may not be a Wikipedia editor's job to do that verification (no original research), but it's all easily done by a third-party. Having seen developers catch serious flak for a few small errors in judgment, I can only imagine the polemic that would be hurled at someone for publishing a deliberately-misleading review. So, the community essentially polices itself.

cwm handily satisfies my personal standard of notability. The various posts linked by the article have quite a number of comments among them, and it's one of the default WMs in OpenBSD, itself notable, which surely counts for something. There's interest in cwm, albeit not a staggering amount, within the community. There's an editor who's happily created and written an article on it, referencing sources that ought to be considered reliable on the topic. It seems like a grievous error to discard all self-published sources out of hand, particularly in a niche that's largely devoid of professional media coverage. Singlemaltscotch (talk) 20:59, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Userfy None of the sources meet WP:Reliable sources guidelines. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 21:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. [1] FSF is sufficiently reliable source, although the author would do well to include it in the article. --Joopercoopers (talk) 14:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Does the Free software directory exercise any editorial control? I was under the impression that that listed just about everything. - MrOllie (talk) 19:05, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  The header spells This entry published by the Free Software Foundation. I take it as it does. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:02, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  That doesn't suggest any editorial oversight to me. The sheer breadth of the listings (At the moment they list 6881 projects) suggests that they are an indiscriminate directory, which I do not believe would help to build a case for notability. - MrOllie (talk) 20:24, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Compare it to 323546 open source projects on SourceForge. Actually, 6881 is by far less then Debian's package list, whose rules for inclusion is stricter then just being free software, so it's definitely not indiscriminate. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:31, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually the fact that it's one of programs included to OpenBSD base installation (as opposed to software packages like GNOME, Firefox, LibreOffice, JDK and friends) makes it notable on its own. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:NOTINHERITED. - MrOllie (talk) 20:39, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not about inheritance. There are about 30000 pieces of software available in packages' repositories of FLOSS UNIX-like operating systems, and only about 100 pieces of software included in base systems of such OS's. This list is no way indiscriminate, and cwm is one of them. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 22:33, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.