Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Symfony

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) Erik9 (talk) 04:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Symfony

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This product appears to be non-notable. While there is non-trivial coverage of it, it all appears to be in sources that are either not reliable, not independent, or neither. ^Bongo_matic 15:06, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep A cursory search of Google books for "Symfony" [1] turns up significant coverage in numerous published works. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:13, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

True, but the ones that have significant coverage of this Symfony are not independent of the subject. They are written by the developers. ^Bongo_matic 01:42, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I found plenty of books that give adequate coverage to the framework (which is what this article is about). I'm not confusing this with the Symfony CMS. The book The Definitive Guide to Symfony [2] ISBN 1590597869 meets WP:RS. I even find mention of the Symfony framework in quite a number of O'Reilly books such as Adding Ajax [3] ISBN 0596529368 which given their editorial process, means this subject is more than notable. Put simply, I find nothing to indicate that this is not a notable subject. --Tothwolf (talk) 02:30, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, the coverage in reliable sources is either:

insignificant, as in the O'Reilly book you mentioned; or
in sources not independent of the subject, as in The Definitive Guide to Symfony, which is co-written by the director of the Symfony project and a former developer of the project, according to the project website.

So, there does not appear to be any significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, despite there being both (a) significant coverage in non-independent reliable sources; and (b) insignificant coverage in independent reliable sources. ^Bongo_matic 02:44, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree with that assessment at all. The reliable sources guideline states: "Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand.". While The Definitive Guide to Symfony is not a self-published book (published by Apress), Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Self-published sources also states: "When produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.". Considering all the other books I continue to find via Google Books, I see nothing at all that would indicate that this is not a notable subject. --Tothwolf (talk) 03:00, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is not about WP:RS. This is about WP:GNG, which defines, for the purpose of establishing notability, "independent" as:

exclud[ing] works produced by those affiliated with the subject including (but not limited to): self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, autobiographies, press releases, etc.

It goes on to note that:

Works produced by the subject, or those with a strong connection to them [Bongo's note: such as the chief product developers], are unlikely to be strong evidence of interest by the world at large.

As pointed out above, I am not contesting the reliability of the sources in which the product is given significant coverage, nor am I suggesting that they are "self-published" in a technical sense. "Produced" is a much broader concept and is covered by authorship, so the sources are not "independent" as the term is used in the notability guideline. ^Bongo_matic 03:11, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I've stated above and as can be clearly checked by others [4] there are a large number of books in Google Books that cover this subject. The The Definitive Guide to Symfony book isn't being used to establish notability (although IMO it certainly could be used that way). At present the book is listed in the Further reading section of the article. If you think the article needs improvements to its references, a {{refimprove}} template might have been a better approach than this AfD. Even Google Scholar [5] turns up quite a bit of information and journals that have covered this subject. Your continued assertion that this subject just isn't notable does not hold water when this subject has been covered in depth by so many published works. --Tothwolf (talk) 04:01, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NW (Talk) 21:05, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I can find nothing noteworthy about this project online —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.169.36.114 (talk • contribs)
Keep. Or delete articles on every other PHP framework (CakePHP, CodeIgniter etc.) as well, with the possible exception of Zend Framework. I am frankly stunned that someone considers Symfony not "noteworthy" enough. It is an extremely well known PHP framework, as any web programmer would tell you. It's pretty much my means for making a living at the moment. What kind of "non-trivial coverage" do you need? It's a web framework. It just quetly works and powers websites. They typically don't write "Powered by Symfony" in big letters, but it's there alright. There are perfectly adequate reference manuals and books on it. Okay, I know "reference manuals" and "any web programmer" are not reliable sources, but come on, people, have some common sense! There are FAR more genuinely non-notable OSS projects which have Wikipedia articles on them. I have been using Wikipedia since 2003, and this is literally the first time I find myself disagreeing with its deletion policy. 77.223.72.46 (talk) 14:28, 5 September 2009 (UTC) — 77.223.72.46 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
Keep. Of course Symfony is notable. By a cursory search, it was a finalist in the SourceForge's Annual Community Choice Awards '09. Here's a SitePoint article about it. A book by independent authors (AFAICS) will be coming out soon. It's a silly nomination, especially if you're familiar with the world of PHP. Symfony is one of the most notable frameworks there are. Reinis^talk 08:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Just for good measure, here are some more books: 2 books in Japanese: symfony×PHP and symfony徹底攻略, also 1 book in Japanese that compares the most well-known PHP frameworks PHPフレームワーク入門—CakePHP/Zend Framework/symfony/CodeIgniter対応, and 1 German book Das Symfony Framework: Enterprise Anwendungen mit PHP. Oh, by the way, symfony is used by some of the most well-known web companies like Yahoo! (Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Answers, and delicious.com). They have even acknowledged their usage of symfony for more than 3 years (see http://www.ysearchblog.com/2006/11/08/under-the-covers-and-across-the-pond-with-yahoo-bookmarks/ for instance). You can also find a lot of presentations of symfony made by Yahoo! evangelists. Also, it it can help, just have a look at the number of jobs requiring symfony knowledge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.192.205.147 (talk) 13:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC) — 61.192.205.147 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
Keep. I'm completely shocking. I'm been using Symfony for 2 years, there's a plenty of information about it in the web, and it almost as known as any other framework. Moreover, Symfony is an open source project. If you think that Symfony is irrelevant, you must think that other articles about small or only-for-experts open source projects should be deleted. It's crazy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.0.38.34 (talk) 14:52, 9 September 2009 (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.