Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/EasyChair

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The result was Keep (non-admin closure), the nomination was withdrawn. Ruslik (talk) 06:02, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

EasyChair

Nomination withdrawn - see the end of this discussion. ~~This is a misleading article about conference management software. I've tried to stubify it but various editors insist on reinstating it, so a proper debate is needed.~~

~~The article fails WP:VER and WP:NOTABILITY for the following reasons:~~

No independent evidence of notability

No independent evidence for any of the claims made about usage and functionality

Some of the statements made about usage are wrong and misleading - e.g. the product website says that it has been used for certain conferences where in fact rival software was used

The article makes exaggerated claims that are not backed by any evidence, for example saying that it's definitely "the most widely used conference management system"

The software functionality is no different from many rival products

~~Essentially, it's spam. If it wasn't for the fact that it's freeware it would have been deleted long ago~~ andy (talk) 16:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The topic "conference management software" in general is notable, but, Andy, I agree with you that single systems such as EasyChair might not (yet) be. I suggest moving the current EasyChair article to an article Conference Management Software, stripping all references to EasyChair from the general part of the article, but preserving the list of common features and the reference to that one scientific paper about such systems, and then mentioning EasyChair and competitors in a subsection of that article. --Langec (talk) 17:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'm there ahead of you. Most of the encyclopedic stuff is already at Abstract management (I recently added the section on functionality after stubbing EasyChair). But experience with this and other articles shows that specific software is usually regarded as spam - and why not? After all, if you want to find some there's Google. WP should be for the background info. So how about a redirect to Abstract management? andy (talk) 20:32, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Abstract management is a fraction of functionality Conference Managament Systems usually do -- you have full papers, even LaTeX paper sources submitted and the system can compile them for you and form proceedings volumes, like EasyChair does for instance. You can manage the actual schedule of the conference, parallel tracks of the same conference (e.g. there was th FLoC conference EasyChair hadnled the special needs for), when the papers (full papers, not just abstracts) review is done, they can be rebutted by the authors in case of rejection. I think Abstract management should fold into Conference management software instead, or even more generally, Conference management as there is more to it than abstracts. --Mokhov (talk) 20:46, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Andy, thanks for the pointer to Abstract management. I wasn't aware of the existence of the article. The article itself looks good, but the lemma is probably not to the point, as such systems generally do more than managing abstracts. --Langec (talk) 18:27, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note I rv'd some unintentionally disruptive edits by User:Mokhov and asked for them to be reinserted properly. Mokhov voted keep - see here

I re-added my stuff below, indentend without missing up your nomination this time. Sorry if it's not as tidy as you would like it to be. --Mokhov (talk) 20:46, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's my take on responding to the points (appended this time instead of purely inline, per recommendation from Andy). The original response items preserved, but indented (--Mokhov (talk) 20:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)):[reply]

No independent evidence of notability

the above is a bold and uninformed/unsuppored claim. Please see the list of notable conferences that use the EasyChair conference system --Mokhov (talk) 17:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No independent evidence for any of the claims made about usage and functionality

the very same notable conferences and many others use it for the very functionality --Mokhov (talk) 17:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment -that's not what notability means in Wikipedia - see WP:N. andy (talk) 22:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the statements made about usage are wrong and misleading - e.g. the product website says that it has been used for certain conferences where in fact rival software was used

your claim/facts are outofdate. It happens for coferences to start with one system first, and then in the course of action switch to another system. Also andy when you checked back in March, we are in July, things evolve. Many conferences later remove the links to submission when the submission deadline passes. Now, the confereces listed on the stats page due to the systems requirements to combat spam and auto-registration -- have to be approved manually after submitting a form. The fact they even appear there is that the conference organizers made a request to have it hosted by EasyChair and were granted (manual) approval to do so. If one conferences has switched from one system it started with and then to EasyChair as another system does not support your claim, as the conference web page maintainers also quite often lag behind updating the pages with the proper links. In another instance I have experienced, was the initial submission was through one system for a review, and the final camera-ready submission was through another, which was announced through the acceptance email rather than on the web page. --Mokhov (talk) 17:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The fact remains that the product website contains false claims that it was used on certain conferences. andy (talk) 17:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article makes exaggerated claims that are not backed by any evidence, for example saying that it's definitely "the most widely used conference management system"

there are no such claims in the aticle anymore; the original contributor may have been very pationate and did not remove the NPOV wording, but we can clean up all those remaining, if any, in the short term --Mokhov (talk) 17:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The software functionality is no different from many rival products

perhaps the claimant hasn't used this or any other system of this kind to make such a claim; one only learns by usage and experience, which it seems andy does not have (this not personal) --Mokhov (talk) 17:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Actually I have, but that's neither here nor there. A quick look at other product websites will show that they all claim broadly similar functionality. E.g. compare with Oxford Abstracts andy (talk) 22:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I realize the list of features--Mokhov (talk) 15:39, 15 July 2008 (UTC) is the weakest part of the article, I agree. In this case, if we are to consolidate various software systems under one article (one of the previouslu proposed), we can have a table -- a matrix denoting systems vs. claimed features and cost for comparison. --Mokhov (talk) 00:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Essentially, it's spam. If it wasn't for the fact that it's freeware it would have been deleted long ago andy (talk) 16:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I sincerely diagree it is a spam. I used the said system (and many others) to submit my academic articles through for review and publication and this one is most functional by far; regardless the "spam" assertion is not supported enough given there are plethora of independent evidence from the very conferences and the notable conferences that use it. The only problem with the article is not elaborate enough and had a few NPOV traces; which is often a problem of many articles as they start up. --Mokhov (talk) 17:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
perhaps I added too much text in the inline comments above in the defense of the article... I am not sure if we will manage to keep the EasyChair wikipedia article in place, but I will not oppose consolidating it under Conference Management Software as Langec suggests if the community finds the current article still to fail the said standards and to be deleted. --Mokhov (talk) 17:26, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep is, therefore, my vote, per the above reasons I put in my responses inline and signed. --Mokhov (talk) 18:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Mokhov said it best...and first! Ecoleetage (talk) 00:58, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Mokhov said Keep but also supported the proposals of both Langec and myself for a redirect to a generic article, either a new one or Abstract management andy (talk) 07:38, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- This is correct; that is if the article doesn't survive on its own, I am for merging its content, in full or in part, into the "generic article". Sorry for messing up with the AfD, as you pointed out it was unintentional (after all it's a first time I am participating actively in one). --Mokhov (talk) 15:39, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mrge into an article, but "abstract management" is only part of what it does. DGG (talk) 03:30, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well since nobody has written the generic article yet, and most of the functionality is covered in Abstract management how about a redirect to that article until such time as someone writes something more generic? The article isn't acceptable as it stands, and the lack of a really good place to merge or redirect to is no excuse for keeping it. andy (talk) 09:00, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, on re-reading Abstract_management#Functionality I think it covers about 90% of the "meat" of this article without once plugging a particular software solution. andy (talk) 09:04, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Abstract management itself should be moved and redirected to Conference management or some such, per my lengthy comments earlier. In the case of EasyChair they are also make a publishing service within the system itself, and can organize the schedules of a conference and other things like that with parallel tracks, which is more than just abstracts. Now, what about the full papers, their camera-ready versions, and others? Are we going to have Full-paper management or Camera-ready paper management as well?? For instance, EasyChair allows upload of papers and compiling an LNCS volume automatically for the editors, etc. So, essentially this boils down to renaming abstract management to conference management, having a section on conference management systems from EasyChair including EasyChair itself, and making a table comparison matrix of various software systems supporting various degrees of paper management, conference management, other features, publishing, and cost. Abstract management then should redirect to Conferece management, and so are specific software tools that do the management. Or, the EasyChair article simply be improved further. :-) --Mokhov (talk) 03:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you going to write this non-existent article? If not, then until someone does EasyChair should be stubified and a link added to Abstract management and anywhere else that seems relevant such as Academic conference. Hmmm... didn't I do that already? andy (talk) 11:20, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I fully support Mokhov's plan, if somebody goes ahead and writes that article. Unfortunately, I don't have time to do it right know. Otherwise, Andy's plan is OK. --Langec (talk) 18:29, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus? - it seems to be agreed by the only three people who've done any serious editing of the article that a generic article is needed. So I've created a stub (someone had to!) here and stubified EasyChair and put in the appropriate links. Hopefully the new article will develop into something useful and generic. On that basis I'm withdrawing my nomination. andy (talk) 19:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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.