Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/GNATS

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. L Faraone 03:23, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

GNATS

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Completely WP:NN software project. Toddst1 (talk) 13:05, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:05, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - per notability. Malke 2010 (talk) 19:38, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. All the really pertinent information is already on the Comparison of issue tracking systems page. Ducknish (talk) 20:37, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Obvious keep. It's the bug-tracker of big projects such as the GNU project, FreeBSD[1], NetBSD[2] and surely others that I don't know about. In the past, its development was a frequent news items. Notability doesn't evaporate just because something stops being news. I'll try to add to the article (UPDATE: done), but I don't have much time. The article should be developed further, and deleting it isn't the way to make it happen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gronky (talk • contribs) 13 March 2013‎

How does being used fit WP:GNG? If it's been in the news, cite it (not Usenet news). Toddst1 (talk)

GNATS' notability is verifiable by the number of websites and webpages dedicated to it. See GNATS#References for a selection. There are webpages devoted to GNATS by academics in non-related universities, as well as CERN, and non-related software developers. Finding a heap more is too trivial to need instructions. Some websites/webpages don't exist anymore, but many can be found via archive.org, but anyway, as a section title in the notability guideline says, "Notability is not temporary". I haven't checked Usenet, but it seems that Usenet pages/articles would count since the notability guideline says "published works in all forms and media" (it's in the bullet point "reliable"). Gronky (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

People documenting their bugs and/or their use of a product doesn't qualify as "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," Beyond that, Usenet news postings are inherently self-published, similar to blogs. Please don't remove the {{notability}} tag again. Toddst1 (talk) 16:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Articles by third-party authors, published in media with review processes:

A section about GNATS in the book Practical Development Environments
Author Nikolai Bezroukov writes that GNATS "has been the cornerstone of Free Software bug tracking systems"
Jan Sandred, in his book "Managing Open Source Projects", writes in a section about GNATS that it has been the cornerstone of open source bug-tracking systems (not sure who wrote first, Jan or Nikolai)
Article by Cyclic Software
http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/softdevel/gnats.htm
http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/ivezic/sdss/gnats.html
http://www.codealias.info/technotes/gnats_bug_tracking_system_configuration_howto
http://www.codealias.info/technotes/integrating_cvs_with_gnats

Finding more isn't hard but I think this is already enough. I'd also note that I think it would be wrong to only look at this type of source. For software, especially software that peaked in the 1990s, there were very few magazines and news sources with review processes. The number of installations, third-party contributors, and third-party extensions is a better gauge. Gronky (talk) 02:22, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Relisting comment: The new sources need to be evaluated before determining consensus

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Secret ^account 05:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Gronky has provided a very useful list of references. Of these, this, this and this are significant enough to meet the WP:GNG notability guideline and the other references strengthen the case. Thincat (talk) 09:54, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge and redirect to GNU Project. Sources are sketchy; the third source cited directly above has a disclaimer that it is outdated, and this article looks like a permastub. Miniapolis 14:15, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The two book references shown by Gronky above seem to be in enough depth to consider them valid independent reliable sources. A Google books search shows other books with shorter mentions. I agree with Thincat that the Cyclic source is also reliable; while out of date, it is a useful source of information about GNATS at the time it was written. Multiple reliable sources means this topic is notable according to WP:GNG and WP:NSOFT. That it is the bug tracker for FreeBSD and NetBSD shows the significance of the software. As best I can tell, the article is close to or at start-class and there is enough information in the article to be useful to users. This suggests that the permastub assertion doesn't apply here. A notable topic and no insurmountable content problems suggest that this article be kept. --Mark viking (talk) 21:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The sources here are primarily short comparisons or tutorials. Few are more than a couple of paragraphs long, and they all repeat the same basic information. It's not plausible that this could be developed beyond a facsimile of the comparison section in Practical Development Environments, especially given that the software is seemingly moribund and that there's no demonstration of any non-trivial analysis of its historic use in FOSS projects. The argument that software from the pre-2000s should be excused from our guidelines on sourcing doesn't hold any water: notability is not inherited and simply having been used by an influential project (back when said project was far smaller than at present, it's worth noting) is isufficient. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:02, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

These are separate issues. Some sources, like the books, contribute to the notability criteria.

Other sources (often self-published writings by third-parties) show the topic's potential: there are lots of third-party developers, extensions, and modified versions. (See the list I gave above, and the references section of the article, and here's another comment about someone making a customised version.)

And the software's age is worth considering because for software that peaked in the late 90s, web searches only find a fraction of what has been written. There's printed materials (such as "Slackware Linux unleashed", but I don't have a link to a scanned copy) and websites/webpages that are no longer available.

(And lastly, GNU, FreeBSD, and NetBSD still use GNATS - the latter two use the send-pr interface.) Gronky (talk) 02:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I checked Google again. There is still no notability. Malke 2010 (talk) 03:49, 31 March 2013 (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.