Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cowboy coding (2nd nomination)

Northeastern US residents sometimes use the term "Cowboy" derogatorily to mean reckless or irresponsible. Sticking the word "Cowboy" in front of the word "Coding" doesn't make it a software development philosophy. It is a Neologism - it just means the same thing as "Cowboy-anything" but applied to code.

The first attempt to delete this article failed because Google has roughly 270 hits on "Cowboy Coding." I could not find *any* that are noteworthy. Most link to this article as their source! Wikipedia has a No Original Research policy which this article clearly violates.

The idea behind this article has some merit, in the sense that there can be an absence of development methodology in the same way that Anarchy is the absence of Government. But someone needs to articulate that much better than this article currently does. The article Software Development Process:Other has a section called "Code and Fix" that seems to roughly summarize this article. Maybe that section could be expanded? Also Capability Maturity Model Level 1 seems like the same idea. Actually, I think that's the closest match to the concept of development anarchy.

One person wrote that the term Rapid Application Development is sometimes used when companies don't want to admit that they have no formal development process. Maybe a section should be added there to say a little more about that. Maybe a list of maverick software developers should be made?

Here is the talk from the first attempt at deletion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cowboy_coding

Keep The term is reliably sourced and meets WP:GNG. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:12, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What makes you think that? Two entries from the c2.com wiki (see Wiki is not Wikipedia) and Mick West's personal web site (which starts its definition with a link to this article in Wikipedia) do not constitute reliable sources in my estimation. The reference to Google's 20% Time does not use the words "Cowboy Coding". I don't have a copy of Software Project Management by Hughes/Cotterell to check that reference, so it's possible that 1 out of the 5 sources **could** be legitimate. With all the programming resources available online, that is the best the world could come up with in the 8 years this article has been around? Instead of making vague "the sources are out there" statements, it's time to see those sources if people want to save this article.GlenPeterson (talk) 18:57, 1 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]