Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xitip

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 delete, discounting single purpose accounts. Sandstein 21:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Xitip

Contested PROD. Somebody put an article up for an obscure piece of information theory software whose existence was impossible to verify. None of the references given in the article mentioned anything whatsoever about this software, and what is supposedly the software's home page says "This page is under construction."

Subsequently a page was put up on one of the external sites referenced that had no more than a couple of sentences vaguely referring to proving information-theoretic inequalities.

There is still no independently verifiable evidence that this software actually exists. It is an example of vaporware, and not at all notable at that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deepmath (talk • contribs) 01:09, 3 July 2008

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. —Eastmain (talk) 01:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It would have to be pretty well talk about to be notable prior to release. I can't find anything online relating to it. The article creator pretty much admits to a COI in the edit summaries; they're talking about their own software, which isn't big enough to be notable at this time. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 01:36, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Adding to it, is the fact that it says the software will be available for download on... makes it sound like vaporware/advertisement, even though if the last was left out, it wouldn't have been so obvious.ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 04:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Must retain It is very useful for information theorists. It works nice. perhaps it was not available earlier, but i see it is pretty accessible —Preceding unsigned comment added by Epflmit (talk • contribs) 08:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC) — Epflmit (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Comment I fail to see how it's vital. it has barely any theory related things, no source code (which Wikipedia isn't for), and the closest thing is what it does, which proves notability for the inequality thingy page (where ever it is) not XiTip which is a software, not a theory. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 22:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment:*Comment I think you are sort of ignorant about information theory. It is not simple algebraic inequality prover. Information theory deals with concept of entropy (sort of surprise element in a message). This tool is not for school children to play little inequalities. This is already heavily used by Information theorists across the world. Information inequalities are very very hard to prove. The tool Xitip is of humongous use to check whether some complicated inequalities are indeed true. Remember that, the well known Shannon capacity formula is also coming from such inequality. Ofcourse, the documentation of the tool is not yet available on the page linked, but that is available in Information theory society publications (IEEEexplore) for the useful readers. I guess these folks (who created it) must be thanked for putting this to public use. Myself being and Information theorist knows the significance of such a software. Just to restate it, information theorists all over the world, want to know whether the bounds they found is always true and this does exactly that. ITIP (The one they linked from this xitip.epfl.ch) did more or less the same, but that was partly outdated, partly required license and so on. Besides, the source code is there and I am a little suprised that, some comments are written (saying source code not present etc) without really checking properly. I happened to check it, last evening during this ISIT conference in Toronto, where I could take the source, compile and make an executable. This is already talked about among folks here)ηTheoryWizardTheorywizard (talk) 09:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)— Theorywizard (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
CommentI think what you fail to notice is that while you're talking about the notability of the theory, this is a software. Not a theory. The page should be on the software, not on some theory or other or way to check it, which would belong on the theory page. Also, if the software is "important", but not yet notable (which from the wording of your's I can't tell, and I'm no expert, but if it was, can you give some sources?), it doesn't need a wiki page until it's notableηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 16:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete any article which makes this little sense. If there is an assertion of notability here it needs to be expressed in a manner that we can understand. According to its wikilinks it verifies inequalities in the longest river in Ireland, the usefulness of which is a bit lost on me. AndyJones (talk) 16:26, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I dont think the idea of this page is to teach information theory (That is available in many places). Please be aware that, information inequalities are much more complicated than algebraic inequalities. These are inequalities on information measures.Information measures are functions (special functions involving probabilities) of probability distributions. Again, the comments are a little under prepared comments. Please be aware that the guys who created (at least one of them is a well known figure in the information theory field) this are unlikely to spend time on explaining this to general public. Moreover this is unlikely to be a commercial product. They provided the source code and it is open to anyone to improve it, including us.ηTheoryWizard

Theorywizard (talk) 09:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Yes, but is it notable? You can have endless amount's of some research project created by some school or other and obscure software on some notable subject, but if it in itself is not yet notable, it doesn't require a wiki page. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 16:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Retain It is a pretty interesting utility even in statistical inference and learning. There is scope for expansion of the documentation but definite entry.Iadmirestars (talk)— Iadmirestars (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Comment It's a little disconcerting to me that apparently three new accounts have sprung up in support of retaining this article:

Epflmit (talk • contribs)
ηTheoryWizardTheorywizard (talk • contribs)
Iadmirestars (talk • contribs)

These three accounts at this time have not made any edits outside of Xitip, Talk:Xitip, and this AfD discussion. It looks suspiciously like a case of sock puppetry to me. Deepmath (talk) 05:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's a good thing AfD don't follow number of votes then. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 15:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess this is leading to arguments without properly understanding the essence of a tool developed. The idea of putting this on Wikipedia is not market it of any sort, by which there is nothing to gain. It is just to ease the job of someone, who work in related area. If the self appointed folks think they understand what is information theory (and concluded this utility is find the length of the longest river in Ireland!), and offer comments offered above, you can vanguard the credibility of the listed item, by your own actions. I leave it to you. It is pretty disappointing that, people with no clue of the subject and still claim to classify the items. I have added it to aid someone's research somewhere in the world, who may not have readily seen all the Information theory aids. Galoiserdos (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 12:18, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment How about, as somewhat of a compromise, starting an article on Shannon-type information-theoretic inequalities (or some such)? In this article, we can talk about what these inequalities are, why they are important, why they are hard to prove, and the fact that software (such as ITIP, and now Xitip) has been developed to prove such inequalities. Would there be any objections to this? Deepmath (talk) 15:39, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we can have entry describing these inequalities and their difference. Shannon type inequalities are talked about and they are already classified so in information theory. I am more than sure that, some one in the near future will edit this page and increase the scope. Currently Shannon (and non Shannon type) type inequalities are talked about and discussed mainly in Information theory journals (or arXiv) and perhaps one of the recent book (Raymond yeung's book Information Theory and Network Coding, Springer 2008).A google search of non shannon type inequalities already will have some hits. For instance www.cs.princeton.edu/~ymakaryc/papers/nonshann.pdf Galoiserdos (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:20, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good. Call the article something more generic, like Information-theoretic inequalities or Inequalities in information theory, and then you can also talk about the non-Shannon type inequalities and what makes them different from the Shannon-type ones. Deepmath (talk) 19:10, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment May I reiterate that the discussion at hand is about the notability of a software, not the notability of the theory behind the software. It seems that people are failing to understand this key concept. Regardless of the notability of the theory (which is obscure), if the software fails notability (as there can be a endless number of softwares based on one theory) it does not deserve a wiki page. Therefore, if it is a theory you are stating, leave that to the talk page for the theory or create a page on it. It also seems like there are lots of sockpuppet/One-Time Use accounts here.....leaving me to wonder if the article fails advertisement/promotion. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 15:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ignorance about a theory (anything for that matter) does not make it obscure. This theory unfortunately is not yet taught in high school (in US, as you are a high school student in US as it appears in your profile). If and when you decide to learn, you will learn. If you think, you are the right person to make a judgment on topics such as this, little to be said:-)Galoiserdos (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:07, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Let's drop the comments about "ignorance". While I do not feel that this software is notable per se, (after all, I did propose the article for deletion), the discussion made me realize that we are lacking a Wikipedia article on the related theory, which certainly is notable in information theory. The purpose for my suggestion, which Noian considers off-topic here, was to suggest ways for the original contributor(s) to the Xitip article to contribute encyclopedic content to Wikipedia, rather than what appears to be promoting their own software, which is certainly inappropriate for Wikipedia. To reiterate, I stand by both my proposal to delete the Xitip article, and my suggestion for ways that the original contributor(s) to that article could contribute positively to Wikipedia. Notwithstanding, I question whether someone who engages in sock puppetry and/or repeated calls others "ignorant" has the motivation or desire to contribute positively. And it's completely irrelevant to refer to an editor's level of education on Wikipedia. Contributing properly sourced material, and no original research, leaves little room for someone's educational qualifications (which we can't verify anyway) to bear. And it doesn't take a PhD to see that the article on this software has no references outside the software's homepage, which did not even exist at the time of the article's creation. If it is in fact used by information theorists, I would expect that in some of their research papers they would have cited their use of this software. I don't see any such citations, or, in fact, any evidence that the authors of this software (or someone closely connected to them) did not use Wikipedia to announce their software prior to its release. Deepmath (talk) 17:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Thank you Deepmath for the rebuttal. May I quote from the article to Galoiserdos:

"Xitip is a graphical front end based Information theory inequalities prover[1][2]. This software is adapted from the ITIP software."

I am not questioning the notability of the theory. I am questioning the notability of the software which is what this AfD is about. Please don't bring in red herrings to the discussion. Edit: I fully support Deepmath's proposal to create a page on the theory tough, but that is unrelated to this, as it obviously wouldn't use any significant amount of text from the current page which is on a software. Also, may I remind you Galoiserdos that it is wikipedia guidelines to assume good faith to all users and against guidelines to attack editors. My education has nothing to do with the obvious fact that this article on a software is not notable. It

might be notable in the future, but right now it isn't. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 18:50, 7 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.