Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/History of iOS jailbreaking (2nd nomination)

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. causa sui (talk) 16:43, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

History of iOS jailbreaking

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A spinout of iOS jailbreaking, this article should never have existed in the first place: the entire article is, and has been, in such a state that it can never exist as a viable spinout without massively violating WP:V. Nor is the parent article in any need of spinning out due to changes to that article I've made removing any citations to primary sources/blogs. Finally, it isn't really a viable target for searching either, which removes its only remaining ground to exist. Sceptre ^(talk) 03:22, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - See the previous AfD for my reason, which explains why the article exists. Also, per WP:BEGIN this AfD is premature, as you did not consider merging, nor was any discussion for merging the content made, which I assume is what is meant by this AfD, as opposed to deleting the content outright. Also, how the article cannot exist without violating WP:V perhaps needs clarification, as the content in the article is verified. - Sudo Ghost 03:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article that History of iOS jailbreaking was split from, IOS jailbreaking, is also unlikely to keep this edit, as it removed over a third of the article, including important topics related to jailbreaking, such as SIM unlocking, of which jailbreaking is a generally required prerequisite on iOS devices. To nominate this article for deletion because of a temporary removal of content in another article seems hasty, at best, especially as the other article is extremely unlikely to stay in its current state. - Sudo Ghost 03:44, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did consider merging; there's no policy-compliant content to merge. Would you rather I removed all the policy-breaking content, then nominated it for deletion? Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and BEGIN only serves as an advisory guide. I see no way in which this article can be improved or merged, so deletion is the only remaining option. And any view that the removal of content from the parent article is temporary is misguided, I'm afraid; content on Wikipedia must be sourced to reliable publications, of which it was not and could not be. Sceptre ^(talk) 03:46, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is unlikely, as I'm gathering third-party sources for it now. It took me less than ten seconds to find sources for content you removed from the article, which apparently could not possibly be found. Your edit to the IOS jailbreaking article is temporary, and makes using that as one of the reasons for deleting this article irrelevant. As for WP:V, this article has many reliable, third-party sources.[1][2][3][4] The rest need to be improved, and sources exist. The article can be improved, and that this has not yet occured is a reason to improve the article, not delete it. As to the "it isn't really a viable target for searching either, which removes its only remaining ground to exist", I'm not aware of any such policy, and I'm also unsure of how you've garnered this. Until you removed it, IOS jailbreaking had a link to this article, which is where any interested person is likely to be looking. - Sudo Ghost 04:13, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And to show the dearth of WP:V compliant content, the only reliable sources in the article are either stories about the first jailbreak, or articles about Apple closing exploits. If we removed all content apart from that, it becomes a violation of WP:NOT a collection of changelogs. While I admit that the parent article is devoid of the history of the practice, this article offers no content that can be suitably merged into it. Sceptre ^(talk) 03:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I will say that the article needs to be changed from a list format into prose, which will remove the changelog-esque structure the article currently has. I'm also unsure of how the first jailbreak and Apple's relationship with jailbreaking by closing exploits does not fall squarely into the history of iOS jailbreaking? All I'm seeing here is reasons to improve the article, not to delete it. - Sudo Ghost 04:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In a normal world, a spinout article that shouldn't have existed would still be a redirect if it was a viable search term, but this is not. In any case, this article will violate WP:NOTDIRECTORY as it will, in any form, be a list of changelogs/releases. (Apple releases a iOS version to close an exploit, Dev Team find another exploit, in perpituity) The only jailbreaks that should be mentioned in any capacity are the first ones in each particular field, if that. There is no way this article can ever viably exist as a spinout without violating policy or being merged back, hence it should be deleted. Sceptre ^(talk) 04:31, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merely saying something is does not make it so, and still all you've given are reasons to improve the article, not delete it. If the only jailbreaks that should be mentioned are the first ones in each field, then how is it that this article can never exist? I'm not seeing how content backed by sources such as this have no value and should be outright deleted. If this article is to not exist, then the relevant information needs to be merged back into the parent article, not deleted outright. However, I believe the issues with the parent article needs to be addressed first. While you've chopped two-thirds of the parent article out, there was information there that needs to be reliably sourced and placed back in the article. The article in its current state is sorely lacking, and when it is improved, the article may very well (again) be too large, and warrant a split. - Sudo Ghost 05:02, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But merging that back in would create an unnecessary duplication of content, as the Library of Congress ruling is well detailed in the parent article. In any case, this article, like many others, were created from a false sense of size of the parent article ("welp, this article is 65kb, it must be split immediately"). Just as BEGIN applies to AfD, it also applies to article creation; the correct process would be to remove or replace all poorly sourced information and then spin an article out. I've gone through the table deleting rows that are not reliably sourced and I was left with nine rows: two mentioning the first jailbreak (mentioned in the parent), one mentioning the Library of Congress ruling, and the remaining six engaging in changelog cataloguing. And besides, you miss the salient point: by its very nature, this article will violate NOT's proscription of cataloguing and indiscriminate information, or be too short to warrant its independent existence; taking an article from 64KB to 58KB would not solve any SIZE issues. (And by the way, there wasn't a SIZE issue to begin with, as that guideline counts prose, not edit window bytes. There was under 10KB of countable prose in the article at the time of splitting, and even being generous, there was probably only about another 20KB in the table). Sceptre ^(talk) 03:02, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Next time you nominate an article for AFD, read the previous AfD. The size issue was not the only reason the article was split.

As for the rest, all I have seen provided are reasons to either improve or merge the article, not to delete it. For the change log deletion argument, I went to look at the wording, and apparently it was removed from WP:NOT, as it was apparently added without consensus. Other than that issue (which apparently there is no consensus for), I'd argue for why the article should be kept, but I'm not aware of any other valid deletion reasons given. All the others issues can be solved by improving the article, or if push comes to shove, merging. - Sudo Ghost 03:29, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(Just to note, I had no part in removing that from WP:NOT in any way.) - Sudo Ghost 03:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The part in NOT about changelogs was removed by the creator of an article I nominated for deletion after the nomination. Nominators of AfDs cannot be expected to keep an eye on policies seven months before they want to nominate an article that won't exist for four months. Given the COI KelleyCook had in removing that part of NOT, I would argue that it remains in force regardless of the methods of originally adding it. Sceptre ^(talk) 15:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus on the AfD you linked seems to be that WP:NOT is not a strong reason to delete an article, but rather to change and improve an article. So I'm still not seeing any strong reason given to delete the article. - Sudo Ghost 20:08, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NOT absolutely is a reason to delete an article, the version history AfD notwithstanding. That AfD was swamped with "keep-it's-useful" votes that encouraged an admin to close it early. Sceptre ^(talk) 20:14, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're citing a part of WP:NOT that wasn't included with any discussion or consensus as the only reason for deletion, when this issue, even if valid, can be solved by improving the article. As such, this is not a valid reason to delete this article. - Sudo Ghost 20:21, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can't expect me to know the history of WP:NOT: if it's on the policy page, then it can be cited as policy. And as nine months passed before the creator of the article that was at AfD removed it, it's fair to say that it's just as valid as policy as anything else on the page. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merge, Rewrite or Move to other Wikis. Sceptre, I feel that you are being a bit strict to the point of being a WP:NOT nazi or whatever. If this article shouldn't be a single page by itself, then all we have to do is merge it back into the Jailbreak page. (Note: which would make the Jailbreak page way too long). I think this was split from the Jailbreak page, but if it was not, then this should stay as a separate page to prevent the lengthy articles problem. Also, since you recently deleted the link to this article on the Jailbreak page, I feel like you just want to get rid of this information for a reason or no reason. If this article is deleted without a valid reason, we would lose a lot of information. (I think some of these article deletions result in major losses of information that people would not really attempt to compile in the future, so I don't want to see this information get deleted). - M0rphzone (talk) 07:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(I am a newbie here. so if my comment is inappropriate, please delete my comment)I just think the original version (before splitted and removed the breaking status of different versions of iOS & devices) was useful, and was verified by millions of jailbreakers and many real softwares, so i think that should be kept.User:Marstone —Preceding undated comment added 13:37, 15 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions.

—Tom Morris (talk) 07:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:04, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Even if it was well sourced this would be way too much detail for an encyclopedia. Steve Dufour (talk) 04:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a valid reason. Many articles have timelines with info. Should they also be deleted just for having "too much info"? - M0rphzone (talk) 07:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. I should have said too much detail about a very minor topic. An encyclopedia should have an article which informs a person who doesn't know much about the topic. A super-detailed, blow-by-blow account of everything that happened belongs on a different site, not an encyclopedia. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:48, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

that reason isn't valid either. there's no such thing as "very minor" on wp, there is notable and not notable, as determined by community consensus. if something turns out to be notable, there's no length limit or detail limit for the article as long as sources can be found for the included information. if something turns out to be non-notable, there's no article for it.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:10, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

keep—it seems that there is no wp policy for timelines in particular. the next closest thing i can think of is a list, since a timeline is essentially a list of events in the history of a given topic. so it seems reasonable to look to the list guidelines for guidance. oh, look! WP:SAL actually says that timelines are lists. this brings us to WP:LISTN, which states that A list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources. this seems to me to be obviously the case for this topic, given sources in the article and many, many more that are available elsewhere. the nominator doesn't actually seem to make any claims about notability in nominating statement, but instead worries that the article can't exist without violations of WP:V. first of all, that seems to be untrue given the refs in the article and many more available. second of all, it's not plausible that there are topics such that *any* article on them *must* be a violation of wp:v. if there are individual statements in this article which aren't verified, fix them or delete them. third, even if there were such topics, it's irrelevant in an afd. all notability policies boil down to the question of whether there are reliable sources that show the notability of the topic. if a subject intrinsically fails wp:v, presumably this will never be the case, so it's really not relevant as to whether the article should be deleted.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:36, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, now that I've given it a lead para. As far as I can tell this is a valid WP:SPLIT from the parent article. —SMALL JIM 16:20, 24 October 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.