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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 no consensus. Cirt (talk) 22:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Spring project

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Spring project (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Probably non-notable game. Despite the presence of a Refimprove tag on the page since June 2009, all the article's references are to the project's own websites (with the single exception of an interview with the developers). Psychonaut (talk) 23:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the significant numbers of mods and independent websites is relevant here (linked or discussed in article, 300k+ posts in main forum). Also, not many games can claim to have been used in published academic research. I think that covers notability; verifiability is not currently a problem for this article. jonon (talk) 10:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, "Pure" a commercial game that can be purchased at http://impulsedriven.com/pure uses the Spring Engine. It's an independent source that can be noted. OpenSuse has a page on Spring here http://en.opensuse.org/Spring Ubuntu started shipping Spring in its latest 9.10 release. http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/spring-engine so is Debian http://packages.debian.org/unstable/spring http://www.moddb.com/engines/spring lists the Spring Engine as the only open source rts engine.--62.194.222.254 (talk) 23:29, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As much as I'd like to see this article survive, none of those count as reliable sources that provide significant coverage. --Teancum (talk) 20:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Spring project is moving away from its Total Annihilation roots in a steady pace. In the sense that the developers are removing code that was written to support specific "TA" type gameplay. Even if someone merges this article with the Total Annihilation article.. Spring is a different subject matter. I think people visit Wikipedia to read up on the "Spring Project" not to read about "Total Annihilation". Personally I think that the article lacks quality. It opens with a section on "Source Code" and has a "Features" list that reads like a advertisement. Bad, bad, bad. And yes it's light on independent sourcing but it's there. And considering the fact that Linux distributions are picking it up now that there's good open source game content available - I suspect that there will be more people that "discover" Spring and start writing about it. It's simply one of the best open source Linux games out there. They kept a low profile when most good content was based on the "TA" IP but I don't see why that would continue.--62.194.222.254 (talk) 19:11, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is that spring is not total annihilation, many of the projects are not in any way related to total annihilation. Projects such as http://www.imperialwinter.com/, http://spring1944.net/, both of which are pretty remarkable. I have to question the validity of such votes for deletion whenever the users in question have not actually looked into the matter at hand. In conclusion, rather than mark for deletion the users in question, being psychonaut(someone who seems to enjoy being troublesome) and Xymmax both be placed under watch. No research was done and they merely moved to delete on the grounds that spring was a game, when the article clearly cites that spring is an engine. One has to question the reading comprehension levels of these two or recognize that they did not give the article more than a cursory glance. Such behavior is reckless and unacceptable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.186.178.171 (talk) 00:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC) — 70.186.178.171 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
I would like to point out that those two websites are not reliable sources that provide significant coverage on the subject. 137.149.227.207 (talk) 00:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC) — 137.149.227.207 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
Perhaps not, I am not a wikipedia janitor. All the effort to delete a page without trying to see if he could find an acceptable article. I do not think that psychonaut made the effort to even look. Had he looked he would have at least known enough to cite lack of reference rather than call it a game. Very lazy. I do not doubt that it is possible to say that such a small engine is obscure. However, that is not the point of argument. The point of argument is that spring is a game, which it is not. This whole discussion is because psychonaut doesn't do his homework. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.186.178.171 (talk) 01:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know a "large-scale" non-commercial open source game engine? Also Spring is actualy used in a commercial project, still I don't think it's relevant for Wikipedia if a project is or is not commercial.--62.194.222.254 (talk) 23:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My point exactly...it's small scale AND non-commercial AND not developed by a notable contiguous group or organization - all strikes against its notability. 137.149.227.207 (talk) 00:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your argumment is invalid, there are THOUSAND of non-commercial AND yet DISCONTINUED softwares being covered by Wikipedia, what do you consider contiguous group or organization? And Spring Project is under heavy development, each month its engine has an minor update and each semester it has a major update since its release, the development activity can be seen through its SourceForge.net page (also its files activities). There is a gap of dates in the files activies because these were published through other service rather than SourceForge. Your opinion lacks bias and further research, you are saying POV pretty things rather than being fair and yet non-tendentious. Eduemoni↑talk↓ 01:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Original citation notes spring as a game not engine. Therefore I move that the move for deletion was made on an incorrect understanding rather than an actual reason. The site mooddb has the spring engine listed with several projects. See: http://www.moddb.com/engines/spring. Entire rational for deletion was based on assumption that spring was a game rather than an engine. I move that the individual be reprimanded for improper usage of wikipedia and his deletion recommendations go under higher scrutiny. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.186.178.171 (talk) 00:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep This article is about a open source game engine, what is rare. It should be said that both Wikipedia and Wikimedia aid open source community, so they both enforce the coverage of open source projects (following the guidelines of a good article of course), I don't wanna be offensive, but what is a non-notable game? To state something like that further research is needed, but someone from inside (a player) can do it, the Spring community features over than 10.000 registered users, the average online connections per client are 300, over than 20 simultaneous battles happen each minute (depending on lenght), it is a shame that some wiki users make some non rational without bias opinions, because of this article I became a Spring player and this article should be kept for its relevance. Eduemoni↑talk↓ 01:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Mentioned in at least 2 magazines: PCGamer (UK) February 2008, Cyberstratège July-August 2006. Also mentioned two times on slashdot. Open source engine, several games base on that, 1 commercial game. Gtwkndhpqu (talk) 01:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC) — Gtwkndhpqu (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Comment The article really needs a cleanup to meet its guideline. A Copy-edit would do the thing for instance. Eduemoni↑talk↓ 01:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Eduemoni, could you perhaps make a few stub sections in the article so that people could have an idea of what needs to be entered? If only in the discussion section, I suspect that people like this neddiedrow guy might come back and do more edits.
please clarify what you mean by significant coverage in the context of an open source engine. Detail why is it that the engine is not notable, the specialization in rts gaming is a first for an open source engine of this calibur. At least as far as I have seen. Engines like ogre and irlich lend themselves to fps and third person games where as this engine is highly specialized for rts needs. How would one cite that?
  • "Significant coverage" means that [independent, reliable, published] sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material. Please visit WP:N and WP:RS for more information on the subject of notability. — Rankiri (talk) 05:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Starwars Imperial winter was featured in a magazine, does that represent one possible source? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.186.178.171 (talk) 05:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure it represents a possible source for Star Wars Imperial Winter, but whether it represents a source for Spring is another matter. Does the article in question discuss Spring in any depth? Also, who publishes the magazine, and how and how widely is it distributed? —Psychonaut (talk) 10:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment/Suggestion I'm an involved party (as a developer of a game using the Spring Engine, and community member), and thus biased, but I'd my opinion would be that the Engine compares quite favorably with eg. ioquake3 . I realise that itself does not have an own article, however I'm not sure where information on this Engine might best be tucked in. I'm afraid a section within the Total Annihilation article (as suggested further above) would be quite out of place, as the Engine is not derived of that game.
I'd therefore suggest moving this article to "Spring (game engine)", overhauling the article itself (accordingly) and depending on the outcome of the overhaul, not deleting. I myself would be glad to take on those steps, and barring vocal opposition, would start on it soon. Regards Sean Heron (talk) 09:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC) (apologies, the anon was me)[reply]
  • Comment I am an engine dev that's why I am biased too, still I find the argument of missing RS quite weak, e.g. OGRE does only link to their own website too. And having an entry in MobyGames says pretty less, because anyone can add it (-> even the developers of the game itself), not to forget that Spring is an engine and so it shouldn't be on MobyGames. Also Spring and its games are listed on several websites, e.g. The Linux Game Tome & Moddb. And merging it in the TA article wouldn't suit this project, because it's neither a TA clone nor is it a further development on the top of the original TA code, which was btw never be made open source as quake3. That's why the Spring project tries for a very long time now to distance itself from TA. It's true that the current Spring article doesn't reflect this enough (the whole header should be rewritten) and is overall in a bad state (it reads like a promotion text), but this doesn't legitimate a deletion as a whole in my opinion. Jk3064 (talk) 11:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just because some other articles, such as OGRE, may lack reliable sources establishing notability is not a valid argument for keeping this article. Please see WP:OTHERSTUFF for further details. If you find another article which also fails to meet Wikipedia's sourcing and notability criteria, then it should be tagged for deletion as well, not held as an example of why some other non-notable article should be kept. —Psychonaut (talk) 11:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • outside of the fact that you marked it for deletion because you incorrectly thought it was a game, and the fact that wikipedia is supposed to about information. Seems like all wikipedia cares about these days is how much buzz an item has and not the distribution of information. I really would like to know why you decided to pick on an open source engine for the wrong reasons and then decided to continue to pursue it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.186.178.171 (talk) 14:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I didn't nominate this article for deletion because it was about a game; I nominated it because it didn't seem to be notable enough to merit an encyclopedia article here. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an indiscriminate collection of information, and nominating an article for deletion has no bearing on the nominator's personal feelings towards the subject. I'm a Free Software developer, user, and advocate myself, and the fact that Spring is "open source" has no bearing on this nomination. Indeed, if you review my contribution history you'll see that I nominated many other articles for deletion, probably including software, that have nothing to do with open source. —Psychonaut (talk) 15:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep 1 and 2 are Google Scholar links that are not trivial mentions as others had supposed. It's amazing what you'll find if you actually read more of the article than the little blurb. Both experiments use Spring as the basis, therefore increasing notability. On that note I think we as Wikipedians often throw out Google Scholar links for that reason. We think "Oh, Only see the article's title twice in the article, so they must be passing mentions." I'm not saying we all do that, but enough of us do to make it a problem. Additional refs provided above: PCGamer (UK) February 2008, Cyberstratège July-August 2006. Also mentioned two times on Slashdot. 1 - covers Star Wars: Imperial Winter, which runs on the engine. That's 7 good refs right there. Now We're getting too complacent with the "it's not on the list of reliable sources" arguement, instead of truly looking at the references provided. --Teancum (talk) 12:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment the reference provide by User:Krator (videogamer.com) is also directly listed as a reliable source per WP:VG/S, and though a short blurb, can easily serve as a secondary reference, further adding notability. --Teancum (talk) 14:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pardon me, but I have no good reason to believe that either magazine provided any type of significant coverage for the game. Both references come from a new user, who—no offense—seems to be unfamiliar with the concept of WP:RS. Slashdot entries are user-submitted. Cyberstratège's website shows no coverage of the game. PCGamer UK doesn't list the project in its database and shows zero search results for "Spring". This PCGamer UK forum discussion[2] indicates that the game may have been included on PCGamer's disk because of a user request. Such disks are always filled with mods, demos and other not necessarily notable freeware so I doubt this alone demonstrates any kind of notability for the game/engine. One of the mentioned Google Scholar documents offers extremely limited, trivial coverage. The other one goes into some details but it I agree with Marasmusine and decline to view it as a single notability-establishing source (see [3] and other similar discussions). — Rankiri (talk) 14:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Though I don't own the issue, evidence of the Spring engine in PCGamer can be found here. PCGamer's web search engine is not exactly reliable when it comes to digging up articles. A scan of the writeup can be found here, which covers both the engine and the Star Wars: Imperial Winter game. The Cyberstratège article can be found covered on their website. Once again a mere writeup is only found online. The print version goes more in-depth. Finding both sources took me all of five minutes. As far as the link you provided about the Google Scholar discussions, I fail to see how that would apply to the particular sources mentioned here. Both sources use Spring as the basis for the entire paper. If I write a paper on blood flow and only mention the heart once, does that make the heart not notable even though without it I could not conduct my analysis? --Teancum (talk) 16:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • From what I can tell, the scanned article is dedicated to Star Wars Spring and only contains a single reference to the engine itself:The rather cheerily(?) named Spring engine is a live framework for making RTS games, most notably the loving Total Anniilation remake Spring:TA.. According to WP:NOTINHERITED, notability of a child project is not particularly relevant to that of its parent. We had a very similar discussion for the Halo engine about a year ago: WP:Articles for deletion/Halo Engine. When seen as an open source RTS game engine, Spring doesn't seem to have any type of independent nontrivial coverage of its own. — Rankiri (talk) 16:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
cute, so because those of us who actually know about the engine have been asked to try and help sort the issue you call it sock puppetry. Where are the individuals debating the points coming from? Checking latest revisions I suppose. So you guys have a dynamic thread of stuff being altered that you can pick and choose what battles you get to fight. Seems to be a bit hypocritical to say meat puppet when you have an entire wiki community. Again, I want to know what is notable. your notability link is ambiguous and suggests that essentially only buzz equals notability. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.186.178.171 (talk) 16:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not calling anyone a sockpuppet. A disproportionate number of unregistered and new users joined the discussion without fully understanding Wikipedia's core principles and policies. The notice is only a call for additional attention to the strengths of the arguments. If your viewpoint is supported by Wikipedia's key policies, it will not be dismissed no matter how many edits you have. — Rankiri (talk) 16:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rankiri and the people arguing for deletion are calling an engine a game. Seems fairly uninformed, so why is it wrong to ask people to come and clarify the misconception. I have appealed for common decency and asked what is it that needs to change and yet you guys give us some ambiguous articles and say not good enough to each attempt to find something that appeals to your standards. Why not make the effort to help clean up the article, and find some of what you consider valid sources? It seems to me that no matter what is done, you guys will regard the engine and not notable and have it deleted, so why should we bother to try? Honestly, the guy neddiedrow is trying to make a version that will be up to snuff. Rather than demanding deletion, why not help get it in order? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.186.178.171 (talk) 17:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
... that article is moderately hilarious, since it defines an arbitrary, unheard-of version of puppetry (contacting the relevant parties and informing them of AFD is meat puppetry???) and then utterly fails to mention it again, instead going on to discuss the wholly separate issue of sockpuppet accounts. Once again, a reminder of how Wikipedia is like lawmaking and sausage-making. -[User:Pxtl] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pxtl (talk • contribs) 17:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I do not have the time to involve myself overmuch in Wiki politics, which is the primary force behind most, if not all, deletions and topic reviews. Nor will I make references to Wikipedia policy, as discussion of such, rather than action on the basis of such, is usually fruitless. The article itself is poor, being a hold-over from a Wikipedia long past and I am now rewriting it to both serve the project and Wikipedia better. This will take some time, as I am busy with professional life - but the primary change you should be aware of is that, since Spring is not a game, but an engine, it will be listed as such. It will meet notability guidelines, as will any of the specific game articles which I choose write thereafter. However, I must note a fundamental problem with the notability guidelines in regard to open source software - notability as shown on Wikipedia is established through academic articles, reviews, and pop-culture references; without the support of commercial advertising and a commercial advertising budget, these seldom appear - when they do, in the case of various Linux distributions and alternatives to commercial software, this is due to a dedicated group of people willing to invest copious amounts of their own resources in advertisement. We cannot cite the number of people who use the software, that is not grounds for notability, nor are the novel features of the engine. We do not have the money to pay people to review or use our software, and if we did, those people would still need to meet the subjective standards of [independent, reliable, published]. Luckily, this will not be a problem, since it is used enough academically by virtue of functionality and quality. Neddiedrow (talk) 19:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As for the desire for more attention to be paid to the people who recently joined the discussion, I can only say that there should be more scrutiny levelled against those who assert such - contribution by newer, interested users is not a manifestation of Meatpuppetry, in general or in this case. My statement here is in response to a rather egregious failure to assume good faith on the part of the participants. It is worth noting that citation of policy is not a substitute for argumentation, rather it is meant as augmentation to such, and the assertion that those who recently joined the discussion do not understand Wikipedia policy is generally unfounded and unnecessarily aggressive - Wikipedia policy is dependent upon interpretation, many articles are viewed under one standard, others under another. Anyway, my keep is on the basis that it will be replaced with a more accurate article, which I am writing. In the event that this article is deleted before the completion of the replacement, that is no problem, an article dealing with Spring and in line with policy will be put up when it is completed. In no case should this article be merged with that of Total Annihilation, they are substantively different and one is not dependent upon the other. Spring is a platform for a variety of commercial and non-commercial games, the notable of which will be added independently to Wikipedia after I rewrite this article. Neddiedrow (talk) 19:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. Let me reiterate something I said earlier: when treated as a game engine (and in fact, both the Wikipedia article and its own About and Download pages treat it as such), the Spring project doesn't have any direct coverage in any of the above mentioned sources. PC Gamer UK only looks at Star Wars Spring, Cyberstratège appears to provide a strategy guide for TA Spring, the only nontrivial Google Scholar document deals with Total Annihilation: Spring and LinuxGameZoo particularly declares that its review covers the TA Spring version, [a]s Opposed to just the reference “Spring” as in the Project named “The Spring Project. I think the main problem with this article is that wants to be all at once. If this project has several separately developed spinoffs, mods, etc., it may be best to treat them as all individually, as separate subjects with their respective pages. But you can't provide a bunch of loosely associated sources that don't address the subject directly (and generally don't even mention it at all) and call them indicative of notability. That's the essence of my view. — Rankiri (talk) 21:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Spring is free software, you're free to try it yourself - if you did, you'd find out how Spring does not follow the pattern typical of most closed-source engines, or OGRE-like engines that were more libraries than full platforms. Most game/mod developers on Spring do not bundle their content as a complete game installation, but as a package-file for Spring. That is, players get Spring, and then their game. The forum is a shared space. The game lobby (where multiplayer games are organized) is a shared space. The torrent-file distribution system is a shared space. Maps are interoperable. That is to say, presenting Spring as an aggregate of the projects available for it is quite appropriate, since currently that's how the projects present themselves - as Spring packages, rather than stand-alone games. The exceptions to this rule are developing, more ambitious project that were not mentioned in the above references (well Star Wars Spring is now, but it was not at the time of the articles on it). I realize the AFD discussion is over, I just felt that this issue had to be cleared up. Either way, I agree that this article probably falls on the darkish-grey side of Notability and needs a hell of a clean-up, but I'm a firm inclusionist. Hopefully this AFD mess will encourage people to pare the article down to Wikipedia standards. Pxtl (talk) 23:54, 3 February 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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