Wikipedia talk:Software notability

message: I would like to address one point that keeps coming up in this discussion: the notion that subjects do not merit an article because they are "an obscure developer topic", "people might not care", "[u]sers don't know and don't care", or because they "seem important to a small group of people, but not the world at large".
Based on this approach, even the Britannica would have to prune a substantial portion of their articles. In the published scientific literature you will find reports that Wikipedia is increasingly integrating specialized scientific information. Obviously, the public does not know and does not care. Of course, that does not mean we should go ahead and remove all these articles. So can we put this idea -- that a subject must be important to the world at large -- finally to rest? Rl (talk) 09:03, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "Importance to the general public" is not so much what I would look for, myself.  "Notice by people without a professional or financial stake or interest in the subject" comes closer to what I'm getting at.  Genuinely scientific and academic topics aren't usually going to be tied to commercial products.  That said, as an internet encyclopedia Wikipedia does have an inherent bias that tends to overemphasize IT minutiae.  My interest here is simply to create something that's going to reduce the amount of pettifogging about sales brochures and feature lists for minor software products, and the claims that Obscure Trade Association Award and Review in Glorified IT Blog turn these brochures into encyclopedia subjects. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 05:40, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That was my impression, too, and you have my full support there. Thanks. Rl (talk) 07:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no problem with excluding product brochures and the like.  However, it appears you may have something else in mind.  As I understand it, you wish to have it so articles about software reviewed by, say InfoWorld, Cnet, and other notable sources be deleted from the Wikipedia.  Do I correctly interpret the intent behind your edits? Samboy (talk) 19:12, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

text: The criteria is whether it can be sourced to reliable third party sources and not blogs, forums and chat logs. "The world at large" just means exposure outside of insular groups, as Ihoyc says. Miami33139 (talk) 08:30, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Really, what I am going for here is not quite as strict as the web content guidelines, which require published coverage in mainstream sources, but something similar.  If there isn't mainstream coverage, only technical coverage, it should be technically important, a breakthrough of some sort; and what I came up with sought to recognize that as a second track to notability.  My wording may not be the best, but that's what we're here for. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 20:37, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles do not have to seem important to the general public 

message: Is anyone else interested in tracking related AfDs (to see if and how the guideline is being applied)? They seem to be filed in
*Web or internet
*Games or sports
*Science and technology
and maybe others. We could collect them here or somewhere else. Rl (talk) 14:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This page is not a guideline, it is an essay and needs to be renamed and edited to reflect that. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No renaming is needed; the template at the head of the page spells it clearly.--Oneiros (talk) 16:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tracking related AfDs 

message: I’ve rewritten the part trying to differentiate non-“general interest” sources and the wording trying to make reviews non-notable.  Quite frankly, if a given piece of software is reviewed by Infoworld, Cnet, and what not, the piece of software is notable enough to be included in the Wikipedia.
I see there are some concerns about people spamming the Wikipedia with articles about their own software.  These are legitimate concerns, but the Wikipedia policies we currently have (reliable, notable, third-party sources, WP:COI, etc.) address these concerns without changing policy and Wikipedia consensus.
If a given article is too spammy-sounding, we can reword the article to be more neutral.  If a given company tries spamming Wikipedia with their non-notable software package, we can and do delete the article without needing to make an artificial distinction between “general interest” and non-“general interest” sources, nor creating a new bar for notability (by making magazine reviews non-notable) that deletes content that, up until now, has always been considered notable. Samboy (talk) 21:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand the concern.  I have reworded the definition of "general interest" and re-inserted the language showing that it is required for some sorts of notability.  The most significant computing and business media like Infoworld or The Wall Street Journal do in fact reach audiences outside of those communities, and as such deep coverage there probably should be enough.  Minor trade publications still should not make the grade, though. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks really good.  For the long term, I’m not sure that “printed on paper” will continue to be relevant; a lot of notable computer magazines no longer make printed editions.  For example, PC Magazine, a long-time staple at newsstands, stopped printing their magazine in January of 2009.  Another very notable magazine, Computer Shopper, which was famous for its phonebook-sized issues in the 1980s and 1990s, is also no longer in print.  I will slightly revise the article to allow these magazines to be used as sources.  Samboy (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good deal.  I had wondered about the original proposal myself; may try to start a RfC on this within the next several days.  Good to see this is getting attention and input from all sides of the debate. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 22:02, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  I have re-worded parts of this article

message: I'm somewhat new to this proposal, but I think that offers a fresh prespective too. I want to ask though where we're at on this. I think most of the initial issues have been assessed here. I think perhaps the only particular issues I see now is the need for an explicit inclusion or exclusion of video "games", or perhaps a more amorphous definition (which is what it is now). Shadowjams (talk) 10:29, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's be clear. This is an essay. Not even a proposed guideline. As a proposed guideline, it would have been marked as  a long time ago. Pcap ping 17:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  You know, the best way to handle this proposal is to make it one worded so all parties can have a guideline that they can be satisfied with.  There’s nothing wrong with a notability guideline for software; the only issue is one that tries to make it easier to delete software (especially free/open-source software) articles.  Samboy (talk) 16:28, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reassesment 

message: Just a note: Whoever moves the article and the talk page should also move the archives and the archive index and change the configuration of the bots to use the new names.--Oneiros (talk) 19:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moves 

message: The need for an actual software notability guideline seems fairly obvious, given that software articles of questioned notability form a fairly substantial subset of Articles for Deletion discussions.  
Wikipedia is not a directory of all software packages that can be verified to exist.  Because of this, I believe that something at least slightly more restrictive than the general notability guideline is called for, especially since the other factor at work in software notability discussions is the possibility of spam, and the general tendency of articles about software of doubtful notability to be created by editors with commercial conflicts of interest. 
"Notability" is a term of art here, a word with a technical meaning.  It's also an ordinary English word; what's notable is "worthy of notice; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished."  I've tried to keep the common sense definition of "notability" in mind here, as elsewhere, and that's why the current proposal has a two tiered track to acceptable notability.
===Two tiers===
The first tier consists of software that end users are likely to directly interact with: software such as video games, word processors, mass marketed home accounting programs, web browsers, media players, and the like.  For this general class of software, the general notability guideline is probably going to be good enough.  This sort of software is likely to be noted in general interest publications that are read by broad audiences of computer users.  
The second tier consists of back-office software of various kinds: IT department oversight tools, systems administration tools, programming tools, and business software that is not really mass marketed, and is likely to be in several ways either bespoke or require elaborate customization from the vendor.  This sort of software is seldom if ever "notable" in the ordinary English sense.  Only small communities of business or computing professionals are its target market.  They alone are likely to be aware of it.  The general computing public does not interact with these programs unless they are also computing, business, or IT professionals.  
For this, more than the general notability guideline's recognition of mere verifiable existence should be required.  Unless this software somehow breaks out into the awareness of the general public, in which case it will receive coverage in general interest publications, something more should be required.  Technical or historical importance, with significant recognition of that importance in truly neutral sources, is what this proposal requires of this sort of software.  
You might say that the proposal is biased against back-office technical and business software.  Yes, you could say that.  The packages that comes up at AfD suggest that there are many such vendors, with minimally distinguishable products.  Businesses of this sort, with purely intangible digital property, are able to spring up and vanish or be swallowed fairly handily.  The goal here is to make sure that software that has been recognized as groundbreaking, launching a product niche, or is of true technical importance does get recognized, while not becoming an indiscriminate listing of every such package that can be confirmed to merely exist, or providing a free web host to startup businesses seeking to drum up customers by taking advantage of Wikipedia's servers and usefulness in search engine manipulation.
===Precedent===
Several different existing notability guidelines were consulted in framing this proposal:
*The business notability guideline.  This would seem to be the most immediately relevant, since commercial products are already covered by it.  That guideline establishes that media of "limited interest and circulation" do not in themselves confer notability.  This, and this guideline's track of general interest versus technical interest, are two ways of getting at essentially the same thing: notability implies a relatively large audience, and material that does not circulate outside of small communities does not confer notability.  This text should be interpreted in the same spirit.
*The website notability guideline seems also to be immediately relevant; it is the one existing computing related notability guideline.  It requires, in essence, notice in reliable offline and mainstream sources for a website to become notable.  The nature of the World Wide Web almost demands such an approach.  
*The pornography star biography guideline.  Yes, that.  I cite it as an example of an extremely restrictive content guideline, born of a consensus that we did not want to provide a directory for porn stars.  Porn stars, by definition, are getting media coverage. ("Coverage" may not be the right word.)  But porn stardom is generally relatively ephemeral.  That guideline requires either coverage by specific mainstream and widely read sources, or groundbreaking work of importance in the history of pornography.  (Cue the march from Peabody and Sherman).
As a proposed guideline, this is therefore not radical or unprecedented.  We have a major spam problem on our hands, and a situation where we've allowed a culture of entitlement to exist.  Conflicted authors of articles on minor software and tech businesses routinely complain that their competitors have articles, why not me? There's an offsite industry of marketing consultants offering instruction on how to create spam pages on minor tech businesses.  Gaming the system and offsite canvassing seem common in these discussions. 
If you think that this is intended to make deleting that kind of article easier, you're right.  It almost certainly can be tuned better, to forbid what it's meant to forbid and permit what it's meant to permit.  But if you think that the problem does not exist, the facts seem against you. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:43, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time to move forward 

message: Several different existing notability guidelines were consulted in framing this proposal:
*The business notability guideline.  This would seem to be the most immediately relevant, since commercial products are already covered by it.  That guideline establishes that media of "limited interest and circulation" do not in themselves confer notability.  This, and this guideline's track of general interest versus technical interest, are two ways of getting at essentially the same thing: notability implies a relatively large audience, and material that does not circulate outside of small communities does not confer notability.  This text should be interpreted in the same spirit.
*The website notability guideline seems also to be immediately relevant; it is the one existing computing related notability guideline.  It requires, in essence, notice in reliable offline and mainstream sources for a website to become notable.  The nature of the World Wide Web almost demands such an approach.  
*The pornography star biography guideline.  Yes, that.  I cite it as an example of an extremely restrictive content guideline, born of a consensus that we did not want to provide a directory for porn stars.  Porn stars, by definition, are getting media coverage. ("Coverage" may not be the right word.)  But porn stardom is generally relatively ephemeral.  That guideline requires either coverage by specific mainstream and widely read sources, or groundbreaking work of importance in the history of pornography.  (Cue the march from Peabody and Sherman).
As a proposed guideline, this is therefore not radical or unprecedented.  We have a major spam problem on our hands, and a situation where we've allowed a culture of entitlement to exist.  Conflicted authors of articles on minor software and tech businesses routinely complain that their competitors have articles, why not me? There's an offsite industry of marketing consultants offering instruction on how to create spam pages on minor tech businesses.  Gaming the system and offsite canvassing seem common in these discussions. 
If you think that this is intended to make deleting that kind of article easier, you're right.  It almost certainly can be tuned better, to forbid what it's meant to forbid and permit what it's meant to permit.  But if you think that the problem does not exist, the facts seem against you. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:43, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Precedent

message: I think this essay would be a lot more useful if it can lower the bar for Free software.  Free and open-source software is software that is more potentially useful for people reading the Wiki (since they don’t have to pay anything to download and look at it), and it is released in the same spirit as Wikipedia’s content. 
Anyone have ideas about what kind of wording we should use.  I’m thinking maybe “Software that can be freely downloaded under a Free software-compatible license does not have need to meet as rigorous of a notability guideline as commercial software.  This kind of software, like the Wikipedia itself, is made available under an open-content license, usually does not have the marketing budget as commercial software, and is generally more useful to the community of Wikipedia readers than proprietary software” or some such.  Samboy (talk) 23:01, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Marketing budget should be mostly irrelevant. Advertisements and press releases are not reliable sources. I certainly hope magazines and newspapers aren't being paid to run articles. Not to mention that there's plenty of tiny software firms selling proprietary software that don't have big budgets. Saying that free software should have a lower bar because its more useful to readers is POV. We should present all software equally. Whether something is free/proprietary or open/closed source are just facts to present neutrally, not something that Wikipedia editors should be making value judgments on. Mr.Z-man 00:14, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, although one has to keep in mind that Free Software citations detailing notability are often on less "reliable" sites (blog, etc.) ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 06:26, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

text:  "I certainly hope magazines and newspapers aren't being paid to run articles". They are paid indirectly sometimes. For instance Macworld Expo is organized by IDG, a publishing company that also publishes Macworld. (One of their editors also runs macosxhints.com.) See the long discussion at WP:Articles for deletion/BeLight Software. So, you are more likely to find Macworld reviews of some product that pays a booth at that expo because it gets lots of exposure; PR budget is obviously not irrelevant. Even more so for getting an Apple Design Award (participation at the WWDC expo is mandatory for that). See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Transmit (FTP client). Stuff like this should be taken into account, even if it's not always possible to jot it down to a set of rules. Pcap ping 10:56, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Even so, I would still disagree. By saying it needs to be taken into account, we're sort of saying that the bar for sources for certain articles should be set higher because they're more likely to have sources (or vice versa) which kind of goes against the whole idea of notability being a standard or a baseline. Mr.Z-man 17:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lowering the bar for [[Free software]] 

message: This essay seems to have an inherent bias on the idea that software articles are flawed, contain COI, and/or promotion. The essay seems to be written with the idea that only major software like Windows or "household name brand recognition" products deserve a page on wikipedia. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 06:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: My experience is that software articles do very often contain COI and promotion. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Is the Wikipedia:SPAM guideline not enough to deal with that? Do we need a special one for software spam? Pcap ping 15:50, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it's not.  Again, this proposal seeks to deal with the objection, "But it's notable spam!"  This comes up way too often for me to be satisfied with the status quo.  Again, I'd welcome alternative approaches, but I do think that something needs to change.  Notability is too easily lawyered about, and spam is supposed to be deleted on sight, but in practice it seems not to be happening that way. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:33, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

text: This is also not really getting the job done, for much the same reason.  It's claimed that POV can always be edited away, even though no one ever steps up to the plate to do it, and the people who are beneficially interested in the articles often slowly restore it.  It's a function of the law of disparate interest: those who benefit strongly from the publicity generated by a Wikipedia article are interested in that article alone, while I just review AfDs, new articles, and problematic buzzwords generally.  What's needed is something that says that commercial products with small markets and that can be referenced, if at all, only to publications with small readerships, are not appropriate subjects for standalone articles. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I only know of three people think that it is needed: You, Miami, and JBsupreme. This will never be a guideline. Acccording to WP:N, every reliable source is allowed so this essay is bias. Joe Chill (talk) 19:50, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Joe I don't think that is a fair characterization of my belief system as it pertains to software.  I do not believe the Softpedia or C|Net download pages pass the bar for non-trivial/reliable sources, and I do not believe that a footnote in a book of any kind does either.  That said, I have come across many articles on Wikipedia about software products which do have substantial coverage from reliable third party publications and are just fine here.  Every reliable source should be used, I agree, but I think (perhaps?) we may not see eye-to-eye on what constitutes a reliable source or what makes something notable.  If that makes sense.  JBsupreme (talk) 23:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "Every reliable source is allowed"?  It's not just a matter of counting up the number, you know, and WP:N expects editors to be thoughtful about how much weight (including "zero") they give to different kinds of sources in considering whether a subject is best presented on Wikipedia in a separate article, or as part of a larger one.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:45, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I mean every reliable source with significant coverage is allowed or reliable sources with trivial coverage for verifiability, but not notability. Don't try to explain the notability guidelines to me because I know them by heart. Joe Chill (talk) 04:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias of essay 

message: I've started an essay at WP:Notability (software) that takes the opposite stance of this notability essay (or rather, addresses the concerns of the oppose votes listed above). As this essay presents the opinions of one side of the argument, to revise it according to the other would not be appropriate and is the reason why I created the fork. Feel free to contribute to this essay as I'm not experienced in writing legalese. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 06:55, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks really good.  I’ve made a couple of minor revisions; I think it’s fair to ask deletionists to spend a minute doing a basic Google books and Google scholar search before marking an article to be deleted. Samboy (talk) 18:02, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that Noian's essay is really excellent, and avoids all the many flaws of this deletionist screed.  I don't have much hope in the few deletionists who have written this one making any effort whatsoever to verify notability before continuing their mass nomination of all software articles.  I spent some time in the last day going through some noms, which are fairly shocking in willy-nilly nominating obviously notable software that have numerous solid citations inside the existing article.  Their attitude seems to be simply that they don't want articles on (FOSS) software, period.  It's hard to reason with that. LotLE×talk 18:09, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Even when there weren't any  sources, you !voted keep just because they were free software. Joe Chill (talk) 18:12, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Guys, WP:AGF please.  When I point out that some deletionists did not do the research before deleting articles, I’m thinking about some of the evidence presented in a recent arbitration case.  I am worried that, unless we make a stand now, the software deletion rampage will not stop and Wikipedia will no longer be a useful place to find little gems of programs.  I use the Wikipedia to find out things I don’t know already, such as software I haven’t heard of. Samboy (talk) 18:26, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

text: What will you try to do next? Films? Video games? Shows? Joe Chill (talk) 19:45, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm currently working on a film about video games, but nothing to do with shows.  JBsupreme (talk) 09:47, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking about breaking into musical theatre, myself. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 05:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Dicks. Joe Chill (talk) 22:44, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternate Version  

message: Signed, ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 23:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Motion to Close RfC as "Failed"