Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ch interpreter

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.  Sandstein  06:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Ch interpreter

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

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

• Nomination for deletion

There are no independent sources to establish notability and Googling suggests there probably aren't any available anyway. Virtually all of the content is advertising and has been added by a series of SPAs, most of them identified only by an IP address. Other editors have already raised questions about neutrality and notability. I call attention also to the large number of Wikipedia spam links found by What links here. (It was this edit that first caught my attention to the article.)

The citations offered are insufficient. Harry Cheng was the designer of the Ch interpreter which makes anything he wrote about it a primary source and not usable to establish notability. The only secondary sources cited are Francis Glassborow's "Member Experiences" of Ch and Tom Huber's "An Introduction to C and Ch." The Huber citation is unhelpful as it's actually not a secondary source discussing Ch, it's a book review. The Glassborow article is a weak citation: This isn't a PDF, there's no page number and all we have is the text of the article, posted to the website of the vendor. It's not clear if Glassborow article was in a print or online publication and the title and lede suggests this may not have been intended a formal review so much as simply yet another member experience post to a discussion group. Msnicki (talk) 18:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Delete. This was a contested WP:PROD. Fails notability, doesn't seem to have multiple independant sources. Google Scholar offers 15 hits on the phrase "Ch interpreter" going back to 1824, only a few of which are relevant and none of them seem to be in-depth discussion of this software. The Wikipedia is a general purpose encyclopedia, not a catalog of every programmer's tool ever written. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:02, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment—SoftIntegration, the company that provides this software, may itself be notable. In the worst case, we could summarize this topic on a company article page. But the fact that Ch Interpreter is being used in a CS class may lend it at least some notability.[1] It is also being used in an independent commercial product, PSIM.[2]—RJH (talk) 19:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• • Comment I couldn't find anything on Google about "Softintegration", the company, aside from a couple of resellers of software - Google Books was unhelpful and I couldn't find it on Google Scholar. --Wtshymanski (talk) 03:46, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I was curious whether the company is only Harry Cheng and a few students (which seems to be common in scenarios like this - look at the location and numerous advertisements). Internet archive on www.softintegration.com/company/career/openings/ provides some insight (looks like it's moribund - only some sales openings unfilled since late 2002). So the company probably isn't notable - I've found no mention of it other than self-adverts TEDickey (talk) 23:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
• Weak delete. The author is an academic and has published quite a number of article on the subject in question in reliable journals and a book by a large publisher. However, I could not find any citations of his papers or the book at the ACM Digital library, although I did not check all the papers. —Ruud 21:00, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• Delete. Multi-aliased WP:SPA who is not responding to requests for WP:RS TEDickey (talk) 21:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• On the talk page, Tedickey makes a good observation that the pattern of spamming about Ch with SPAs extends beyond Wikipedia: Notice the striking difference between the one-star and the five-star reviews of the product on Amazon. (Chuser has tried twice to delete Tedickey's comment.) Msnicki (talk) 17:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I have sent to Tedickey stating my reason before the deletion: Based on the guideline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RS

Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. I am not sure how wiki structure works. If he is a system admin, he can delete the article and blocks me. It is OK with me Chuser (talk) 17:27, 20 March 2011 (UTC) — Chuser (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

@Msnicki, I posted to the other administrator's site to ask the help to remove Tedickey's comment earlier today before seeing your comment, but I eventually gave up after a second thought and deleted my post a couple of minutes later. I believe people come here with a good intention to make a contribution to the wiki. It is a waste of wiki's resource and people's time to get involved for something trivial. After all, it is an internet and everybody can say whatever they like and have their opinion. Also, it looks that you don't like your C shell to be related with Ch for shell programming. It is not a problem for me to suggest SoftIntegration to remove anything related to C Shell from its website. Hope everybody happy. Chuser (talk) 20:26, 20 March 2011 (UTC) — Chuser (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• Comment

1) The page for the article written by Francis Glassborow is updated in wiki. I talked to Dr. Harry Cheng via email and he has a hard copy of the journal. 2) The article written by Tom Hubber in IEEE is a review about both the book and software used in the class for teaching. it is not a book review only article. 3) Another article "Ch Solves Portability Headaches" published in IEEE by Professor Gary Wang is missed to mention. 4) Two additional articles published in mactech and DrDobbs are updated in wiki. One is "Ch, A C/C++ Interpreter -- New possibilities for people who like C and Unix" published in MACTECH, the journal of Apple technology. Another is "Open-RJ and Ch" published in Dr Dobbs. one more note, the reason I think Ch shell is related to C shell can be based on the above article and the additional information from the vendor [3]. Chuser (talk) 17:01, 19 March 2011 (UTC) — Chuser (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. 5) who created the link at the top? I appreciate it. Just click around and find a new article "Anchor-based programming teaching embedded with Ch platform" published last year in IEEE conference. Just updated the link in wiki. Chuser (talk) 06:14, 24 March 2011 (UTC) — Chuser (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

google also points out that your new source is coauthored by someone who's been one of "Harry Cheng"'s close associates. That's also the case for at least one of the other links in the topic. Third party sources are what we're interested in. TEDickey (talk) 08:36, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

True. Both Matt Campbell and Zhaoqing Wang have co-authored papers with Harry Cheng. In addition, Cheng was the director of the UC Davis Integration Engineering Laboratory where Campbell was a master's candidate. Msnicki (talk) 19:39, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Google also found this [4], which casts Gary Wang's paper in a different light. TEDickey (talk) 20:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless Wiki modified its rules regarding reliable source and make definition of "associates" and "close associates" (like how close? living in the same building or drinking beer together in the past?), then declare all publications (no matter what and no matter when) authored or co-authored by those "close associates" cannot be used as a second source. That is nothing we can do. otherwise, the arguments goes nowhere. You can write whatever you like about anything, but can you publish whatever you like? Chuser (talk) 06:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC) — Chuser (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

For one thing, they're not second sources, since some of the information they're reporting is directly based on their interaction with Harry Cheng, rather than indirectly, via his writing alone. Further, they are (like Huber, who appears to be a little known associate professor of physics), not experts in the field, who would be useful as WP:RS. Just anyone with an opinion in print doesn't qualify in this case. TEDickey (talk) 23:03, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment

I got a great tip and located another article "The Ch Language Environment" published in Byte magazine. I have just updated it in wiki. An interesting article. It compares Ch against Hamilton C Shell and Matlab. Many weaknesses in earlier version of Ch were discovered. Chuser (talk) 07:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC) — Chuser (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

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.