Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/OpenHAB

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 delete. The "keep" advocates haven't established that the topic has received enough in-depth coverage in reliable sources to counter the nominator's WP:NSOFTWARE and WP:GNG arguments. Xthirtynine, if you want to continue working on the article in your user space, ask on my talk page and I'll userfy it for you. Deor (talk) 11:30, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

OpenHAB

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The only references on this article are to the sites of a couple of awards it has won - awards of the type that are presented at tech conferences and generally covered no where but in the press releases of the winners. The award site citations provide no detail on the software. I've looked, and aside from a couple of self pubished blogs and forum posts, I can't find any independent sources that discuss this software in any depth. This article does not meet either WP:NSOFTWARE or WP:GNG, and should be deleted. MrOllie (talk) 11:59, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. As written, insufficient coverage to pass Wikipedia:Notability (software). It received Duke's Choice Awards (reference link broken...), but that award has no Wikipedia article. Ping me if further refs are provided.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:44, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:08, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Please note that my posting on the openHAB user group was not meant to start any "majority voting" - this is the only channel to contact users (which are - in contrast to myself - NOT involved in the project and thus neutral and independent) fill in relevant content. Besides the content, there are now also more external references.

Besides this, please note that imho this page definitely qualifies for the inclusion criteria "The software is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs." - openHAB is used at at least 20 universities for teaching home automation. A few can be found here], but the majority simply does not publish information.

Another issue is that as the project has its origin in Europe, many external references are in German or other non-english languages - and thus are not included in the article (or should they?). See e.g. the German Smart Home standardization roadmap, where openHAB is listed. Thanks, Xthirtynine (talk) 21:43, 1 July 2014 (UTC)— Xthirtynine (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

- @Xthirtynine: If we could show it's being used in more than on, than this criteria may start to apply. But more coverage would help, so far all we have is either niche or trivial sources. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:21, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- @Piotrus: I really believe that this article has relevance, so let me try to provide evidence for it. I linked above the page about universities that use openHAB. Regarding active use, I know that e.g. TU Dortmund University, Stuttgart Media University, HfT Stuttgart, Technical University of Darmstadt, University of Applied Sciences Cologne and Polytech'Grenoble are using openHAB actively for student courses and research activities. As Kgoderis mentions below, openHAB is really a major (if not the leading) open-source home automation solution. Regarding relevant sources referring to it. You might know "heise.de", which is THE leading IT news portal in Germany. They cover openHAB frequently, see [here]. Other "serious" mentions are the DKE roadmap mentioned above, [ACM (see reference section)], [RAALI] and [Golem]. Xthirtynine (talk) 11:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: I don't see significant coverage in independent secondary reliable sources, and everything thrown in by Xthirtynine does not help either IMO. The only source that could potentially be counted in support for keeping is InfoQ's article, which implies notability but speaks more of Eclipse then of OpenHAB. Google Scholar gives some results, but all I've checked were trivial mentions. FWIW this article should be deleted for WP:RED rationale – its quality is so poor that it is basically easier to write a proper article from scratch then to edit this advertisment. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 23:33, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- @Czarkoff: Regarding relevance, see my answer to Piotrus above. Regarding quality: Please give the community the chance to improve the quality of the article. As there is no commercial company behind the project, there are no professional resources that are paid to write these articles in perfection to the Wikipedia standards. The text came from individuals, dedicating their spare time - and I always thought that this is much more what Wikipedia is about. So I would like to ask you not to directly ask for deletion because of bad quality, but to be constructive and allow addressing any concerns you might have. Xthirtynine (talk) 11:51, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Xthirtynine: If you genuinely want a chance to improve the article, just do it. Even after it is deleted, you can request this article to be restored somewhere out of main namespace and work on it. And when it is ready, submit it via WP:AFC. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 07:52, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. In the context of recent announcements made by both Apple (HomeKit) and Google (Made for Nest) any information on open-source alternatives to commercial solutions is very relevant, let alone important to stir a discussion and comparison between technology options available to anyone involved in the matter, both as end-user or as developer/company. In that sense, if the consensus is to delete this article, then in my opinion this article should be transformed to become an article that discusses home automation technologies in general, including a comparison of the technologies, and with an elaborate sub-section on each technology. Within the category of the open-source home automation softwares, openHAB is leading the pack in terms of recognition and awards, technology advancement (number of technologies covered, Eclipse Smart Home, contributions made by users,...) as well users running the software in a real-world environment. Kgoderis (talk) 08:32, 2 July 2014 (UTC)— Kgoderis (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
- @Kgoderis: Home automation software would be a good article to write, and it could certainly mention OpenHAB. If you'd like, you can ask the closing admin to WP:USERFY the article for you in case it is deleted, so you could rewrite/reuse it. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:21, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- You are right: information about opensource implementation is relevant; but until such implementations become notable, any information about them belongs to the article about the software genre. In other words, your rationale has nothing to deal with this article. Also note, relevant does not necessarily mean that it must be included: although promotion of open source is a good thing to do elsewhere, Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 12:10, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, j⚛e decker ^talk 15:38, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete for lack of coverage per Czarkoff. I agree fully with Kgoderis about the importance of information about open-source alternatives to commercial solutions; however, that has nothing to do with Wikipedia standards of notability, and what this encyclopedia is attempting to achieve. --Bejnar (talk) 05:19, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- @Bejnar: The Wikipedia standards of notability state: "Software is notable if it meets any one of these criteria: [...] The software is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs. [...]". It says "any", not "all", right? So as I have answered Piotrus above, this criteria is clearly fulfilled. What exactly are the arguments to claim that this software is not notable? Xthirtynine (talk) 11:00, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - {{tro|[[User:Xthirtynine|}}: It says "multiple", not "any". Lesser Cartographies (talk) 06:45, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, as I thoroughly read the definition of "Notability" by Wikipedia itself, it does not specify the absolute amount of "coverage" that is required to meet the definition. It is subjective, at least. Also, but that is maybe out of the scope of this discussion, one could/should consider tweets on a subject also as sources to count against. That being said, as the article is in the process of being written, additional References or External Links could be added, but again, in my understanding of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability this is subjective matter. It is Work in Progress that should be abolished, but brought under the attention of its original author so that at least the effort can be made to improve the article.94.224.147.170 (talk) 06:28, 17 July 2014 (UTC) — 94.224.147.170 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
- I think checking Twitter mentions is a very good idea for checking notability nowadays - you will find many independent references to openHAB from individuals, universities, publishers, etc. Xthirtynine (talk) 11:05, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Self published sources such as blogs, forum postings, and tweets do not build the case for notability - we require sources that meet the sourcing guidelines, and self published microblogs do not meet them. For more detail see Wikipedia:JUSTABLOG. - MrOllie (talk) 14:17, 17 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Incubate/Userfy if need be. I suspect this could just be a case of too soon, the project still looks in the early days of attracting developers as I note most of the attention on google seems to have appeared in the past couple of months. Once the bleeding edge demonstrate useful real world implementations, I'd expect coverage to start expanding and better sources to start appearing. Dolescum (talk) 00:15, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete—Not sufficient coverage in reliable, independent sources to meet WP:NSOFT. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 06:45, 18 July 2014 (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.