Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PRINT (command)

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. j⚛e decker ^talk 03:50, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PRINT (command)

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

Wikipedia is not a manual and this article is written exactly like a man page. No objection against moving to a sister project or external wiki. Codename Lisa (talk) 03:49, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Ascii002Talk Contribs GuestBook 04:12, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom. SJK (talk) 05:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the nominator's rationale is correct, the correct !vote would be "transwiki" (to wikiversity or wikibooks) not "delete". NOTMANUAL is not an argument for the elimination of any given content from all WMF projects. James500 (talk) 17:06, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep There are numerous books which establish the notability of the topic - see Windows Administration at the Command Line, for example. A general prohibition of content about computer commands does not seem sensible; it would be like forbidding content about mathematical operations and symbols. If the current content of the page is not liked then there are obvious alternatives to deletion such as merger with print job and our editing policy is to prefer these. Andrew (talk) 07:59, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Notability is required but is not enough; articles the are written like a manual are deleted, regardless of their notability. And seriously, half a paragraph does not make anything notable. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 13:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Articles that are written like a manual are not necessarily deleted. If possible, they are rewritten so that they are not like a manual (WP:IMPERFECT). The passage in question isn't "half a paragraph", it is a headed section that begins on the preceding page. The length of that section is within the range of what I would consider acceptable and Andrew says that there are other sources. James500 (talk) 04:24, 7 September 2014 (UTC) There are other sources and, while I'm not going to provide a detailed webliography, this one, for example, devotes at least three and a half pages to "the print command". James500 (talk) 04:37, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Wikipedia is not a how-to gude or a repository of non-notable computing history. Could be redirected, but I'm not really sure why we would do so. Nobody is going to search for "PRINT (command)". NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NOTREPOSITORY has no application to this article as it is not a "repository of links, images, or media files". Even if this is how-to content, the correct !vote is transwiki. WP:NOT is not a free pass to deprive our sister projects of content or to waste time by forcing userfication before transwiki. James500 (talk) 02:39, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If I can find a book that devotes three and a half pages to this topic without really even trying, any suggestion that it is non notable looks like total nonsense. Bearing in mind the number of sources that refer to "the print command" in those words exactly, "PRINT (command)" is a perfectly plausible search term. And we redirect pages for other reasons than that as specified in WP:R. James500 (talk) 04:44, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My Mac has over 1300 commands, just in the /bin,/sbin,/usr/bin,/usr/sbin directories. Should we create an article for all of those commands? Most of them are described in manual pages. It is not the role of an encyclopedia to discuss every single command on any computer system, any more than it is the role of an encyclopedia to discuss every single specific part in my Toyota. If some of these commands are interesting in themselves, sure create articles on them. But this particular command is not really interesting. It is very rarely used nowadays, since all it can print is plain text, and most people want to print more than that - and even those who do want to print plain text (e.g. source code) will probably use another program to do it. Books on DOS or Windows had a tendency to exhaustively cover every command, since (especially in older versions of those OSes) there were not too many commands to make that impractical. That, I reason, is why you find so many book references to this command, not because it is particularly interesting in itself or commonly used. SJK (talk) 21:33, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The arguments you are making are not supported by any policy or guideline and I do not agree with them. James500 (talk) 07:39, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, I am inclined towards keeping this article. What NOTMANUAL actually says is: "Describing to the reader how people or things use or do something is encyclopedic; instructing the reader in the imperative mood about how to use or do something is not" (my emphasis). This article does not consist entirely of instructions. Even if does contain instructions, I don't see why they can't be rewritten as a description of how the command is used etc (WP:IMPERFECT). To put it another way, NOTMANUAL seems to be more about style than substance. James500 (talk) 04:57, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, or transwiki to Wikibooks or sell to fund Wikipedia, because it is one hell of a manual. Fleet Command (talk) 05:09, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Delete—as overbroad. Limiting the article to a single operating system would work. A grand survey (done well) is just far too much. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 08:34, 8 September 2014 (UTC) The command is less common than I had originally thought. There should be sufficient WP:RS out there to keep this. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 02:44, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Question. Could this be redirected to List of DOS commands, with the option of expansion to a dab page if we manage to create articles for different operating systems later? James500 (talk) 10:24, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi James500. My difficulty with that redirect is that it's not just a DOS command. OpenVMS has a print command, Beos has a print command.... hmmm, but none of the unicies seem to have had one. Maybe this wouldn't be as huge of a topic as I had originally feared. Anyway, if print (command) was a disambiguation page, then print (DOS command) could certain point to List of DOS commands. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 16:27, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Nom's objection appears to be with the content of the article, not the topic. The lead does not appear to offend WP:NOTMANUAL. How about we delete most of the body of the article and call it a day? ~KvnG 23:09, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Kvng:: Or how about merging the lead into List of DOS commands and deleting this one? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 09:16, 18 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine, but it should be a redirect not a delete and can be worked out on article talk pages, not at AfD. ~KvnG 13:22, 18 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 22:33, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dusti^{*Let's talk!*} 00:14, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update—I've rewritten the article. It's rough, but it should be enough to get it out of AfD. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 02:50, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I was skeptical that this could be done, but Lesser Cartographies has rewritten the article in an encyclopedic manner using reliable sources. Nice work on finding the old references. The rewrite has shown the topic to be notable through the use of multiple reliable sources, which are enough for a modest article on the subject. The article itself has no major problems. A notable topic and an article with no major problems suggests keeping the article. --Mark viking (talk) 04:47, 22 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article is small but informative. So I think it should be kept in wikipedia. Unatnas1986 (talk) 13:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Good work Lesser Cartographies! QVVERTYVS (hm?) 20:36, 24 September 2014 (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.