Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SCIgen (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. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 19:46, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

SCIgen (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

There seems to be little point to this page, it only relates to a minor piece of software and is being used as a special interest platform littered with original research, self promotion of questionable sources and unreliable information. It should be noted that while fake inclusions to conferences may be noteworthy a piece of software for producing fake abstracts/papers to them has no more relevance than saying they used MS Word to type the article, there is no evidence they did not type the article manually. --Curuxz (talk) 05:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 11:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 12:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. The actual subject of the article seems to be a noteworthy hoax of exposure that lies somewhere between the Sokal Affair and the Postmodernism Generator. The idea apparently was to generate meaningless texts that apparently related to systems engineering and have them published at various journals and symposia. The hoax has received independent coverage in Nature as well as notice on Slashdot, &c. Seems notable enough to pass, and besides, I like it. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 14:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If this were true then why is it not on the actual IEEE pages??? It seems they are using this backwater article as a personal attack platform. The events maybe note worthy but I fail to see how it makes a page about a small piece of software noteworthy or address the issues with sourcing and tone in this article. --Curuxz (talk) 22:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. It is notable enough. Received attention on the press. A small software maybe, but a notorious one, and with a few important, official consequences. --146.48.84.141 (talk) 15:09, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. The article needs cleanup, but SCIgen itself is notable and there are adequate sources for an article. EALacey (talk) 18:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete.Software its self not notable, the events which are related to it may be but this could be represented on the relevant institution page. Used as an attack page for comments that would not stand up on pages about the institution like IEEE. Its sources either are papers, with no mention of the program, pages that don't work, or blog posts that are hardly notable. The slashdot post (I would hardly call this coverage) can not possibly count since anyone can post anything on slashdot and there is no link/source on the Nature coverage. Was not going to vote my self but if random IP addresses can vote then I see no reason I can't. --Curuxz (talk) 15:52, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Notable, with some geniune press coverage. Hairhorn (talk) 20:16, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. The nominator obviously didn't even take five minutes do to a Google search, which turns up [[1]] and [[2]] among others. The nomination also makes claims of original research, self promotion, and unreliable information without giving any examples of those; in fact it reads like a very generic nomination that can be used for anything, complete with a list of standard nonspecific claims. Moreover, some of these aren't even legitimate reasons to delete an article--we don't delete articles for containing unreliable information, we fix them.

Sorry, the above was me. Ken Arromdee (talk) 21:46, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Admittedly, the article is imperfect, but the topic is notable. If there's unreliable information, tag it or fix it, but don't delete the article just because it isn't yet high quality. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:33, 19 July 2009 (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.