Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Failure-oblivious computing

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. See WP:NOTCLEANUP. Per WP:GNG, it is not necessary that an article contain references to reliable sources; those sources must merely exist. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Failure-oblivious computing

Failure-oblivious computing (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Declined WP:PROD. PROD was removed several months ago, yet no attempt was ever made to fix the problems identified. Original PROD reasoning was "No sources or other evidence of notability." Beeblebrox (talk) 03:48, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• Procedural keep: AfD is not a cleanup tag. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:38, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
• Keep A Google Books search reveals enough sources to establish notability. --Pontificalibus (talk) 13:24, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. It needs to be noted that the "book" with this title found by a Google Books search is a Wikipedia mirror. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
  • So, would that mean we still have no sources? I realize that AFD is not cleanup. This has been an unsourced stub for four and a half years and has no incoming links. I am not proposing that it be cleaned up, I am proposing it be deleted. The dearth of sources and the lack of interest in fixing it would tend to indicate that this is not a notable concept. Wikipedia is not a dictionary of computing jargon. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:09, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
    • No, it means that you clearly haven't used Google Books yourself. There are more books that come up in a Google Books search than just "the book with this title". There are, for starters, two sets of conference proceedings (MMM-ACNS 2007 and ICA3PP 2009) with papers that build upon, and themselves cite, Rinard's work on failure-oblivious computing.

      This begs the question "Why?". Why didn't you look at what Google Books brings up? It's not exactly hard to do, and it takes less time than it took to make the edit that I'm replying to here. You'd have seen for yourself that Phil Bridger was talking about one book out of many. Why did you take the zero-effort route? That's not what I'd expect from you.

      The lack of interest in fixing things is endemic, by the way. It's not even confined to computing subjects — where, as noted, our coverage is nowhere near as good as it has traditionally been thought to be by observers. One could posit many reasons for it, but none are relevant to a deletion discussion of this article; nor are they rationales for deletion or evidence of anything except that Wikipedia writers don't write. Uncle G (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

• Delete The notability is not solidified by the sources indicated. --Stormbay (talk) 02:08, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
  • It was pointed out in October 2010 when this was at Proposed Deletion that the sources supplied are not necessarily the sole sources that exist, and it has already been pointed out again, above, here. Please try to address current arguments, rather than resetting the discussion to zero. This is supposed to be a discussion, and we are expected to read it before joining in. Uncle G (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:10, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
• Merge into fault tolerance or fault-tolerant system. The concept is notable enough to be mentioned but not notable enough to warrant its own article. It should be described in one of the two articles cited – unfortunately, they are very poor in quality. Nageh (talk) 09:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
  • If we had an article on self-healing software systems or software self-healing, then that would be the proper place to include this, per the MMM-ACNS 2007 paper by computer science professor Angelos D. Keromytis. But our coverage of computing subjects is, as usual, superficial and poor; and we have no such article yet. Uncle G (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

---

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) 00:26, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

• As noted above, sources exist (as the people who expended the effort to look for them found) discussing this within the umbrella topic of self-healing software systems or software self-healing. Since we don't have that yet, our coverage of computing subjects being superficial and poor here just as elsewhere, we cannot merge yet. So we keep, since this is valid content under a valid sub-topic title with a useful cited source. There's no sense in throwing this away. It's content that can be built upon. And our coverage of computing certainly needs building. Uncle G (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that point. In my opinion our coverage of computing contains many articles that are of no use whatsoever to a general audience and are more like a directory of obscure terminology than encyclopedic content. This article being an example of such. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:26, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Great. Another person who thinks to know what is useful for a general audience. Wikipedia, an encyclopedia for everyone. :( Nageh (talk) 20:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
    • PS: Read the lengthy discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Scientific_citation_guidelines/Archive_2#Pillar_one_reminder including the section before and after it at the current discussion page. Thanks for your consideration. Nageh (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia has plenty of articles on every subject that are of no use whatsoever to a general audience. All subjects are minority-interest subjects. We don't exclude things from an encyclopaedia because only some readers will read them. No reader reads an entire encyclopaedia. This is a reference work we are writing, which readers dip into as and when they want to know something, not a novel. Uncle G (talk) 04:06, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
• Keep per WP:NOTCLEANUP, WP:NOEFFORT and WP:IDONTKNOWIT. Numerous sources show it's a notable computing concept. Deleting obscure but encyclopedic stuff is hardly a way to encourage people with special knowledge to edit wikipedia. ^walk victor falk ^talk 23:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
• This is a perfect example if what is wrong with afd. Some people do a couple of google searches and cnoclude based on that that the topic is notable. Policies are slung around, a mild personal attack is made on the nominator, and the article.... still sucks balls and hasn't been edited a single time in the 16 days since being nominated, and hasn't been edited in any substantive way since the PROD was declined three months ago There actually hasn't been a substantive edit that actually improved this article in any meaningful way since it was created nearly six years ago. Then :[1] Now [2] If it is so obvious to all of you how easy it would be to fix the article how come nobody is willing to do it? If it can be fixed, fix it and I'll happily concede the point. I suppose it's easier to say I'm a lazy ignoramus because I'm not a computer geek. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
  • No-one has said that, of course, and you are making a straw man argument. Now what is lazy, however, is the bad attitude, which I wouldn't have expected to come from you, that it's somehow Somebody Else's Problem to do this fixing that you want done. So an article isn't perfect yet. Perfection ab initio is not required, and writing an encyclopaedia is the work of years and decades, not 16 days, or even three months. If one wants something done, one mustn't do nothing and then whinge about the fact that no-one does anything. That, after all, clearly defines onesself, the whinger, as part of the very problem of people who do nothing. One must, rather, be bold and do it. That's what Wikipedia:Be bold has always been about.

    This isn't what's bad about AFD. This is what's bad about expecting other people to do the writing and abusing AFD as a club, when that doesn't happen to one's satisfaction and volunteer editors don't jump when one shouts "frog!". What you've really exemplified, and quite badly, is what's wrong with some people's approach to a collaborative, long-term, writing project. Demanding that someone else make this better or I, whilst doing nothing myself, will try to tear down what other people have made so far is very wrong, and not only not the way that we intend to write things here, but also not the way that, over the past decade, most of our content has been written in practice. Go and look at the incremental evolution of the banana article over 9 years, from a 1 sentence stub with a single source to what it is now. Go and look at how long it took North Asia, an entire region of the planet, to expand.

    Live with the fact that we're not finished yet, don't abuse deletion nominations as a way to whip writers into writing to your personal timetable, and don't decry a lack of effort whilst being the very no effort problem that you decry. Uncle G (talk) 04:06, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I know nobody explicitly said I am a lazy ignoramus, but the tone of some of the above comments certainly suggests it. I haven't improved the article myself for two reasons: 1. I know nothing about the subject matter and do not believe I could properly make the improvements. 2. I do not believe this is a particularly notable concept that Wikipedia needs to cover in it's own article, which is the only reason I have nominated it for deletion. I love seeing crappy articles get improved by collaboration. That has not and by all indications will not happen to this article. Your own argument leans towards not keeping it as a stand alone article, the problem being that there is no umbrella article on the broader subject involved to merge it to. In short I would fix it myself if I thought I could, I'm not afraid to improve articles and have done so hundreds of times. I don't see any hope for this one, and it is tiring in the extreme to repeatedly see the argument that somebody possibly could maybe fix it someday based on nothing but WP:GHITS. I also don't appreciate the suggestion that I have abused the afd process. I am not advocating that the article be cleaned up because I don't think it can be. I am advocating for its deletion, which is exactly what AFD is for. I have to mention as well that "whinger" is not a term I am familiar with but I have a feeling I don't much like being thus identified. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:24, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

• Delete per WP:V. The article does not contain references to published reliable sources that support the content. Per WP:BURDEN, it is incumbent on those who want to retain the article to add any such sources.  Sandstein  07:05, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

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.