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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 redirect to id Tech 3. Consensus is measured by assessing arguments agianst policy rather then counting heads and voting for keep by assertion is really pointless as there is no argument to weight against policy. Also note that new users canvassed to support an article as a flashmob are generally given very little weight. So, after that, what this discussion comes down to is whether the sourcing cuts the mustard. Separate notability requires substantial sourcing and the only detailed examination of the sources was that the sourcing was trivial at best. Since this argument has not been sucessfully refuted the conclusion is that this article does not justify a standalone article. The next question is delete or merge, since there is some sourcing merge could be an option so I have chosen to redirect and leave the history so the sourced material can be transfered across. Spartaz Humbug! 04:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ioquake3

[edit]
Ioquake3 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Coverage of this software is limited to the short "Version X now available" press release variety. This can't really be considered significant coverage, going by WP:GNG. Therefore I suggest deletion on the grounds of notability. Marasmusine (talk) 09:49, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game related deletion discussions. Marasmusine (talk) 09:50, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - one of many Quake engine clones. Nothing notable about this one. If there's an article that lists clone engines, a passing mention there is plenty. --Teancum (talk) 16:44, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep "Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was 'Oh no, not again!'. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now." Maybe it was referring these repeated deletion attempts? Seriously do we really have to keep going through this over and over again? Anyway, a few things to consider here. This is not JUST a quake clone, it is the leading free software FPS engine, which powers several notable free (as in beer) and free (as in freedom) games, more than many commercial engines. It is packaged in operating system repositories, such as in Fedora or any Linux system that cares about gaming, it is also the one recommended by Timothee Besset (an id software employee who was in charge of supporting Quake 3 before the source release). It has also has had press coverage, as is shown in the articles citations and if you put the engine into Google. Seriously, do we really need to go through this all over again? - http://ioquake3.org/2009/02/20/ioquake3-entry-deleted-from-wikipedia/ - Comrade Hamish Wilson (talk) 22:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This engine is not a clone. Unofficially, but by reputation, it is the community-maintained version of the QuakeIII engine. Failing a "keep" it should probably be merged into Id Tech 3, but that would be a bit awkward. APL (talk) 23:50, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A valuable piece of software for any Quake III fan and a necessity for any GNU/Linux or even Mac gamer. Highly notable! Comrade Graham (talk) 04:04, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Highly notable subject. Can be used to power Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force Holomatch, Quake3, OpenArena, Urban Terror, and many others. It is the defacto standard for FPS gaming in the Unix World, and presents a technical qualify superior to the idtech3 engine it was based on. A valuable Quake3 derivative on Linux, Mac, and yes dare I say Windows. Is this perhaps an issue of refusing to believe that Linux can run games hmmm? Kc4 (talk) 09:36, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, just in response to the above: Having a reputation, being valuable, or being used to power other games: these are not indications of notability. Nor is my opinion of Linux at all relevant. Marasmusine (talk) 09:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed - What this article needs to survive are some reliable sources that back up the article. I doesn't have any, and it was hard to find any when searching. No matter how useful to a gamer, Wikipedia is still an encyclopedia. If sources can't be backed up with hard evidence, it needs to go. --Teancum (talk) 10:54, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • If you look at the citations, you can clearly see several sources that should be more than enough to establish notability. These include coverage from Gaming, Linux, and Macintosh news sources, including both on-line and printed materials. And if you check you can see that statements such as "we need evidence of coverage beyond Version X now available press releases" are inaccurate and false. Out of all the sources, only four can be said to qualify for this distinction, out of fourteen at the time of this writing. Please make sure your arguments are up to date when you post otherwise your comments end up being meaningless. Comrade Hamish Wilson (talk) 11:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • To be fair, those references did not come until after the article was nominated. Additionally the references are no more than an "available for download" for 90% of those sources, and the other 10% talk about the games which use the engine and do not cover the engine itself, which does not satisfy WP:GNG. The games-based articles would be fine as supporting references, but can't stand on their own without significant coverage of the engine itself. --Teancum (talk) 13:13, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Okay, I'll look through all the citations one by one. The first thing to note is that the sources are pretty indiscriminate in WP:RS terms.
Linux Today: Just a link to a self-published blog, [1].
Betanews: Duplicate of above (wrong address?)
Inside Mac Games, Bluesnews, ausgamers, Phoronix, zeden: Press releases.
Macsimnum: "...according to Inside Mac Games.": copy of above.
Maxiapple.com, MacLivre, XP Games: Trivial content on self-published sources (for example, MacLivre is just a WordPress blog).
OpenArena, Tremulous, urban terror: primary sources
LinuxJournal, The Inquirer, Slashdot, linuX-gamers, JeuxLinux: trivial mentions
In summary, nothing that comes close to the general notability guideline. Once vetted for reliability, some of the trivial mentions can be used to mention ioquake3 in other articles such as Smokin' Guns and World of Padman. Marasmusine (talk) 14:27, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This debate is far from over, and three days is not near long enough to declare that the article is ready for deletion. Some of us have more important things to do than spend all our time chatting on Wikipedia all day, so don't just jump and say "delete it now!" after not getting a response in a day. Especially when you do not have anywhere close to consensus. I was hoping to expand this more, but you are rushing me to post this reubtal:

Your above list is your critique about what the sources do wrong, as a counter here is a critique about what the sources do right, based on the Wikipeida guidelines:

  • No original research is needed to extract the content: CHECK
  • Sources directly support the information as it is presented in an article: CHECK
  • Wikipedia articles should be based on secondary sources: For most of them, CHECK
  • Multiple sources are generally preferred: CHECK

Another thing to keep in mind is even though some of these sources might contain information from what could be considered "press releases", this information was gathered by the news sources themselves independently of ioquake3. They just posted them on their website/twitter/other. Once on the news website, it would seem to me that they would then be placed under that news sources reliability and not that of the original source, as they have found it reliable enough to post. The news sources posted this information because they thought they were notable or interesting, not because they were paied or pressured by the ioquake3 project to do so.

Also, why is being used to power several games not considered important for notability? It proves the engines popularity and shows why it is important. I have seen nowhere in the various guidelines that you link to anything that says that engines can not be valued based on the number of notable games that use them. As a parallel, a persons notability is often establish by the works he/she has done. I do not see why this does not also apply to engines.

In this discussion we have also seemed to have forgot two other points which help establish notability: It's inclusion with Linux distributions and it being recommend by an important id Software employee. I have added this information, with citations, to the article to help demonstrate these facts. These, coupled with the sources, even with your criticisms of them, add enough to establish notability in my mind at least, and I am sure ion some others as well.

The false Betanews link was my bad though, and I have fixed the link. Comrade Hamish Wilson (talk) 02:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agreed, in fact, not to go on a personal attack, it is rather tasteless to claim consensus when the debate still rages on. If anything consensus points more in the direction of a keep, or at least a draw. It seems to me that you are only tired of talking about this. In which case you may learn a lesson from this, if you aren't willing to stand and discuss this than avoid Wikipedia discussions. That aside, let's keep talking about this. If Wikipedia is to be the great encyclopedia people should be willing to talk about things for more than just a few days. Devotion is the only way to build this site up. Hamish has talked about this in detail enough to keep the ball rolling so I just want to say to steady on and let's talk about this. And I still stand by the sources he has posted, granted they are hardly a mention in all the major news outlets, but them in total, combined with the inclusion in operating system software repositories and the recommendation by Besset is more than enough to make me still feel assured that this is strong enough to be worth the minuscule amount of hard drive space it is taking up on Wikipedia servers. We have read the guidelines and we can't understand your interpretations, so please elaborate and let's keep talking. Comrade Graham (talk) 02:33, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I didn't and wouldn't claim consensus. My point was that even with updated references none of them are published, reliable sources, meaning that though the gaming community may/may not deem this engine notable it still doesn't fit into WP standards. No amount of self-published, wordpress, etc sources can fix that. And for the record I like the engine, and see its use. But just like a paper encyclopedia it's got to have reliable, hard facts to back it up. To sum it up, I reiterated my choice per Marasmusine's pointing out that none of the sources added since the AfD are reliable sources. --Teancum (talk) 13:07, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

lol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.188.250.94 (talk) 06:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC) — 216.188.250.94 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Tea and cum needs to get a life. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.69.66.136 (talk) 07:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC) — 66.69.66.136 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Um, I am sorry, but no personal attacks. Please keep that to yourself, for the sake of good conduct, Comrade Hamish Wilson (talk) 09:09, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note off-site canvassing (If TimeDoctor is reading, see Wikipedia:Canvassing) For those of you coming in to the discussion from the ioquake3 community please take note of the message at the top of this page. Insults and WP:ATA arguments from the ioquake3 community aren't really going to endear themselves to the closing administrator.
In response to Comrade Wilson, AfDs last for at least seven days and no-one has called for an early closure, so there was no need to rush. To clarify: I'm going by the general notability guideline, which asks for significant coverage. Short news posts about release dates and passing mentions in other sources just don't cut it for me. But if the other indications you present satisfy the consensus of established editors, then I'm happy to go with that. Marasmusine (talk) 10:22, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are you sure that's not being generous? The last of the three points to another article which is merely a couple of lines of text with a press-release, the other two only mention Ioquake3 in passing. It's not anywhere near 'significant coverage' IMO, which is one half of the notability equation. Someoneanother 18:55, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep because the many millions of downloads in themselves IMO prove notability. (1.5million from this page alone: [5]). The ioquake3 article should be rewritten to show it's status as an independent project and not just a derivative and most of the GPL projects listed on the idtech3 page need to be moved over to the ioquake3 page. — DavidSev (talk) 20:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)— DavidSev (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
    No, number of downloads is not a notability criteria. Marasmusine (talk) 21:55, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Not in of itself, but it adds another log to the bonfire as it were. Still, he makes an interesting point about diversifying the article. Comrade Hamish Wilson (talk) 08:42, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    How is the fact that there are millions of interested people who might reasonably expect to be able to find information here not relevant? I really couldn't give a toss what the guidelines say (and your link isn't even a guideline, just an opinion piece), there are a significant number of people interested in this project who would expect there to be a page here. No one is disputing the accuracy of this page, so it's in the best interests of the end-users to keep the page. Surely what's in the best-interest of the end-users and readers should be the only criteria that matters in the end? — DavidSev (talk) 19:54, 8 January 2010 (UTC)— DavidSev (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
    Also, just because I've only made a few edits over the 3 years I've been here doesn't make me a Single-purpose account. I find it kind of offensive that you would say my input in this discussion has no value just because my edits have been few and minor. — DavidSev (talk) 20:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)— DavidSev (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep no matter how loud people and guidlines scream for reliable sources, many, many people use it and work on it and that makes it notable. If the press is not able to reliably represent this reality it's not a fault of the project and reality is a higher standard than reliable press. What do you need press for an Open Source project? Just looking at the SVN log proves more than any article could ever do. -- ioquake3 maintainer for the FreeBSD project
    I believe this is the "it exists" notability fallacy. Independent, reliable sources are a fundemental principle of Wikipedia. If we have further members of the ioquake3 community posting here, please can they note our civility policy? (these edit comment and editing of other peoples comments don't help) Finally, I'm open to the possibility of a partial merger, following APL and Someoneanother's comments.Marasmusine (talk) 15:20, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I've got no idea how that space got in there. There's obviously a lot of stuff wrong with the way things happen in Wikipedia (now that's something there's a lot of press coverage available for). I'm out of here. --that FreeBSD guy again —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.130.217.51 (talk) 16:27, 8 January 2010 (UTC) — 88.130.217.51 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
    So the solution is for your online community to scream and yell. Sounds like Threshold all over again IMO. –MuZemike 19:29, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I just added a section on academic uses of ioq3 plus references. I think the distinction between "published" and "online" is going to be harder to make going forward. Most academic print media (and print media in general) has been transitioning to an increasingly online distribution method over the last decade. In addition, computer-based research often comes out in the form of online-only "whitepapers" which is a pretty standard industry practice. I was able to find a real published article with an ISBN reference but I don't know that online-only "publishing" would have that type of reference. I think at some point you'll have to give up looking for hardcopy references (is an online-only Wall Street Journal article invalid?) as more and more publishers try to push people to their online presences with exclusive content to drive ad sales. Also, what a "notable" publication is is very opinionated as well... most people not in the computing field have never heard of ACM though those in the field know it's a highly-regarded publication.

    I understand the reservations of using blogs as references but due to the dynamic nature of the web, they may be the only references out there unless you want to use the Internet Archive or Google's cached files for sites that have ceased to exist. If indirect observation of something is good enough for scientific proof (see: black holes, gravitic lensing, dark matter, etc.) shouldn't it at least be given some weight for a works cited page? A blog post about an article about ioquake3 might be the only reference online for that article, for example. Not every wiki contributor has access to a library that just happens to subscribe to the publication that had the article to pull out more specific reference information. Wikipedia is supposed to be an online encyclopedia that caters to the common man, isn't it? Access to knowledge for everyone? It seems like there are MANY more wikipedia entries that are single lines or have absolutely no references or explanation that would be far better candidates for deletion than this article which actually has informative content. At what point does persisting to delete this article while leaving other worse-off articles online actually serve the readers? If I find some articles that don't meet your criteria but aren't in danger of deletion, then modify the ioq3 article to be just as bereft of information, will you then leave it alone? The implementation of your policy seems random, at best, or with a personal agenda, at worst. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.81.110.18 (talk) 18:23, 9 January 2010 (UTC) — 64.81.110.18 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
    Thank you for your constructive comments: the scholarly papers are compelling evidence of notability. It would be good to get some figures on how many times the papers have been cited themselves, as this is what will give them weight towards notability of ioq3. With regards to using blogs as sources, the main issue is with them being self-published with no editorial control, but that's a conversation that should be taken to the WP:RS talk page. I'm not sure I understand your final questions, as I personally cannot give equal attention to 3 million articles. Marasmusine (talk) 18:49, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundquist_number has only a single reference but is in no danger of being deleted because it's not notable. Is it because it's a specialized topic? I see other mathematical and scientific articles being put up for review with more references. It just gives off the impression of inconsistent enforcement especially since the ioquake3 article was put up for deletion at least one other time before as well. I guess it's been different people putting it up for deletion each time but at some point one would get paranoid and wonder if some wikipedia admins have it out for ioquake3! Hopefully the addition of some academic references will show that ioq3 is actually being used by more than just a few games or enthusiasts--not popularity per se but more utility. As for whether or not the cited academic papers are referenced elsewhere, I'm not sure how one would note that in the footnotes.

    For example, one of them seems to be referenced in many places when doing a search on the title, http://www.google.com/search?q=VMM+Independent+Graphics+Acceleration&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DKUS . First page I see the ACM, two different virtualization companies citing or hosting that work, and some more publishing mirrors, second page has it referenced by IEEE and Microsoft's academic research site. I guess by looking for how many times these are cited, you'd want that info in this talkback section, not the main article? But what if someone else comes along in a year wanting to remove it because they don't know that the papers had been referenced elsewhere enough times? It seems like it could get very drawn out as a worst-case scenario. Last deletion was talked about on an admin's personal talkback page, not the article itself, so I would wonder if this whole process would have to be followed yet again. It seems like a yearly thing for ioq3 at this point (though I could be wrong, I haven't exactly been keeping records of this kind of stuff). I'm sure the academic section could be fleshed out a bit more with some more papers if it's still a bit thin, but is there anything more specific that would sway your opinion about the notability of this article? More references? More references with ISBN? References that are cleared referenced themselves by other papers or publications (though not sure how to denote that)? It seems like the addition of the academic category helped quite a bit and I am just wondering if there is anything else that comes to mind that would help further. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.81.110.18 (talk) 09:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC) — 64.81.110.18 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep Ioq3 is being used by many very popular q3's mods, thousands of people play them every day, isn't that not popular enough for you?
    It's not evidence of popularity that we've asked for :> Marasmusine (talk) 21:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    According to Wiktionary:notable we're looking for "Worthy of notice; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished". So I'd say popularity is certainly a subset of notability, being "pleasing to people in general, or to many people" counts as "Worthy of notice" and "memorable" at least. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidSev (talk • contribs) 15:30, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    On Wikipedia notability refers to the notability guideline, which has a specific set of criteria, the dictionary definition of the word 'notable' isn't what's being asked for. The presence of the kind of sources stipulated by that guideline give contributors the building blocks needed to build proper articles. Nobody here is being so petty as to suggest that the article shouldn't be here because not enough people give a damn, sources are what WP is built upon and without them we have a problem. Someoneanother 16:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep From e.g. Google Scholar one can easily find many academic papers mentioning specifically ioquake3 (1) and some of them are referring directly to its homepage. One of the papers is cited by others 17 times (2) and another 7 times (3). The linked examples are published by researchers in Carnegie Mellon University, University of Toronto and University of Tromsø.

    I appreciate people who continuously try to make the relevant information more easily accessible in constructive manner. However, I don't think that merging or let alone deleting this particular article would be constructive or benefit the style and purpose of Wikipedia. The id Tech 3 engine is a proprietary piece of software which is a vastly different thing from the current ioquake3 community project, even though the latter shares common DNA with the former. The information the ioquake3 article already contains about the technology, history and usage of the ioquake3 engine is valuable and much harder to find without a dedicated Wikipedia article. — PracticalPhilosopher (talk) 10:49, 10 January 2010 (UTC)— PracticalPhilosopher (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • General Comment - While most here would not deny that your average PC gamer sees the value and notability in IoQuake3, we have to remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and like any good encyclopedia its sources have to be reliable and published and provide siginificant coverage to ensure factual information. Nobody is questioning whether its popular, or even whether its a good program. The issue comes down to those two things, no matter how popular the engine may be. Should those things ever be satisfied, or if sources are found now that fit that criteria then it's always welcome as an article. --Teancum (talk) 12:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I don't follow game development, but the subject appears to be notable, and the article is well-supported by independent sources.—DMCer™ 21:13, 11 January 2010 (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.
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