Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quicksort implementations

Quicksort implementations

Wikipedia is not a code repository. This article is not encyclopedic content; it's useful, but belongs somewhere else, like the Great Compiler Shootout or Sourceforge or maybe Wikisource. bmills 15:19, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• strong keep extremely useful article. the code makes the point. there are other areas of code in WP. Mccready
• Delete or move to WikiSource or WikiBooks. This is not encyclopedic content. The Quicksort article already provides implementations in pseudocode, an imperative language, a functional language and a logical programming language. —Ruud 16:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it'd go better on WikiBooks than WikiSource, since most of it isn't sourced. --bmills 17:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Comment My understanding was that this was largely a defensive measure to deal with people constantly wanting to add a implementation of quicksort in their language of choice to the quicksort page - users are deflected here rather than deleting implementations off the quicksort page, and potentially righting revert wars over it. "somewhere else" is a good sentiment, but I would suggest it would be useful to figure out where exactly. Leland McInnes 17:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

WikiBooks might provide the best fit — maybe there needs to be a "Programming examples" book there or something. I don't think it's useful to move inappropriate content to back alleys and dark corners of the encyclopedia; if people keep adding non-encyclopedic content, we need to point them toward Wikipedia's guidelines and policies, rather than toward articles with lower standards. --bmills 17:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Delete or move to WikiBooks — Wikipedia is not a code repository --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:09, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Strong delete to let it wander off and die where it will, per poster, Allan. If this goes to WikiBooks, fine. If people have to do their homework themselves, rather than copy it from Wikipedia — even better. :) --Mgreenbe 19:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

  Comment The argument against X implementations pages is that anything interesting about the algorithm is already in X; anything interesting about the languages of implementation is already on respective pages. So all that leaves is a bunch of code: Wikipedia is not a source code repository.

  I agree, however, that some code is useful: in infinite loop, buffer overflow, and pointer, viz. this code with concrete, unambiguous semantics relevant to a particular point has this meaning. But implementations are reiterating what has been said in general in pseudocode.

  For example, the C in-place implementation is interesting, but what is interesting about it is that the work is done in place; put it on the main page. Functional versions which make naive allocations are relevant to FP, and the problem of aliasing and other optimizations of functional code should be mentioned there.

  Lastly, the copyright and licensing implications of posting code from a non-GFDL-compatible project make implementation listings a terrible idea.

  I think the existence of "defensive measures" is fairly silly. If we can keep the day and year pages free of vanity, we can keep implementations out of Wikipedia. --Mgreenbe 19:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)