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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. After two relistings, i see no move towards consensus. (Myself, I have no opinion or I 'd have given one in the discussion.) DGG ( talk ) 07:00, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

XtreemOS

[edit]
XtreemOS (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Non-notable project. No independent sources. Some of the scientists involved in the project participated at meetings or produced articles: this is what academics do and is nothing out of the ordinary. Does not meet WP:GNG. Crusio (talk) 12:20, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:11, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not voting yet, but I have several questions which may result in improving the article. First, I would like to understand on what ground it is stated that the project is non-notable.
This non-notable project has produced software that is still maintained by two Linux distributions one year after it has ended, that means there are users around there. A few sources are cited as it would be not appropriate to describe the full extent of the project here, that would be self advertising.
Please state what is your definition of "primary source" here, that is ambiguous IMHO.
Given that the project has ended, and the consortium no longer exists, if you define primary as "originated within the project" then any publication after the project end will not be primary sources. Shall I provide some? Besides, notice that at least a release of the software has been published (actually one more was out in June, I still have to update the page).
WP:GNG is not relevant: peer-reviewed sources meet wikipedia criterias of significant coverage, reliability, independency of the subject; if the need for secondary sources is the point, we have to decide what is a secondary source in this context.
On a more fundamental plan, your statements applies to any Research project. This means that according to this interpretation, wikipedia should not allow any form of documentation of research projects (unless we define a common criteria of notability for them, which I'd like to discuss).
A large research project (there are many that are been deleted these days, but I'll talk about XtreemOS for now) involves several research organizations and countless people. Shall we provide more peer-reviewed scientific publications?
However, getting more to the point, although partially sponsored by the research bodies, publication are responsibility of their authors. If you rule out any source that has been even remotely at some time connected with the project, or with any of the member institutions, then by the same criteria we should also rule out from the sources of the page "Star Wars" any magazine article based on the statements of George Lucas. That's not how wikipedia works, in my understanding. --Max-CCC (talk) 00:32, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry, but you misunderstand several things, IMO. First of all, WP:GNG applies to each and every WP article. Second, some research projects (and obvious example being the Manhattan Project) generate lots of independent coverage in secondary or even tertiary sources. Third, publications from project participants are not independent sources, not even after the project has ended. Fourth, magazine articles containing statements of George Lucas are not primary sources, because they were not written by Lucas, but by somebody else who, presumably, did some fact checking and such. Fifth, publishing is what academics do and as such, scientific publications are nothing out of the ordinary and producing them does not make somebody or something notable. What does show notability is if others write about such persons or projects. Finally, the word "notable" as used on WP has nothing whatsoever to do with quality, being useful, good, or bad. It only concerns whether some subject has been "noted" by others that are not directly related to it. As evidence for that, we take the existence of non-trivial independent reliable sources. I hope this clarifies the nomination for you. --Crusio (talk) 07:59, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We disagree, which requires a little it of mutual respect to avoid the discussion becomes a quarrel. I see as quite offensive from you to tell me again and again that I don't understand several things, especially for those I did not say. Let's both try not to fill up our lists with things the other did not say.
  1. It is rather obvious that WP policies apply to all pages. I was stating that I believe that you mentioning WP:GNG was not relevant for this page. You may still disagree, but please avoid writing tangential replies. Your point one is non-sequitur.
  2. Point two is the relevant one, also in my opinion. The fact that the projects has spurred activity outside (e.g. Linux distribution) and after its end is IMO a proof of impact, hence of notability. Is there a definition, a standard you are using in pruning EU project pages? Adoption of tools by companies, other institutes, breakthrough technologies? Can we make it explicit?
  3. Point three, the definition of "independent" that shall apply, is the one issue I raised before. Are you stating that there is no way for someone, or some entities involved in a project to be an independent source? I am challenging this criteria, as EU projects involve Research organizations of tens of thousands of people, so your criteria cannot work. On the same ground, any article on the EU could not have as source a document from EU itself. The fallacy of it is, criteria that apply to people do not apply to organizations, and your definitions of primary and independent source as applied to organizations will not. IMO you would not be able to differentiate between a primary and secondary source if it comes from the same huge, high level umbrella organization (e.g. INRIA, or ESA) so in the end you would treat all sources as primary.
  4. Fourth: IMO you don't want to see the point: this is exactly the same for peer-reviewed articles; they are checked by other experts in the field, which shall have no conflict of interest with the authors (this is the standard for serious conferences and journals). Some may personally not trust the process, but that'd be their POV, not the position of wikipedia. They are primary, but reliable sources, which can be sometimes used in wikipedia for explanation purpose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources
  5. Fifth: again, in an encyclopedia you want to synthetically describe something explained elsewhere, so you put sources. Writing in magazines is what all journalist do, so we should disqualify all magazine articles as sources?
  6. Finally I did never link the merit of the article to the quality of the project. I wrote about the impact (causing other things beside the EU-project-world to happen, a requirement for notability) and the self-advertising (forbidden in wikipedia). Non-sequitur IMO.

Can we all discuss about the criteria of points 2 and 3 ? IMO this is what is missing in the restructuring of the FP page, and what is causing the issue here. There is somewhat arbitrary set of projects summarized in the page, whose language TO ME seems rather self-proclaiming and that cannot convey useful information in two lines. How these projects were chosen? What was the evaluation performed? Needless to say, I am assuming that we all want to seriously discuss the topic and not just start edit-delete wars, or keep in the list each one's own preferred projects. --Max-CCC (talk) 00:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • It is not easy to reply to all this and part of your post does not really belong here (e.g., the discussion on improving the Framework article). Ad 1: I cannot see how WP:GNG does not apply here. Please explain to me why it doesn't. As 2: please point me to the WP policy that states that spurring activity outside contributes to the notability of a subject. As to your question: the criteria I apply in "pruning" EU project articles is strictly that of notability. Ad 3: a publication by a project participant is by definition not independent. With participant I mean a person, not a whole organization. A researcher who has no connection with a research project other than working for the same employer may be independent. However, an organization as a whole can never be an independent source for information about the organization as a whole (so EU sites are not independent info for EU-related topics). Ad 4: I'm not sure what you mean with this. I don't think anybody has ever argued that serious academic journals are not reliable sources. Ad 5: Again, I don't see what you mean here. Ad 6: In WP, "impact" is measured by coverage in independent' reliable sources. Hope this clarifies a bit. --Crusio (talk) 02:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that. Here's the first couple I teased out of the hundreds of thousands of Google hits: [1] [2]. --Kvng (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two remarks: 1/ "Hundreds of thousands Ghits": if you click to the last page of Ghits, I get exactly 445. I don't see anything substantial in that. 2/ The first example of coverage you give is an announcement put put by the project of a meeting. The second is a report on an EU website (not independent). --Crusio (talk) 04:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Something funny going on here. First page of results claims about 318,000 but it looks like you're right, there are only 100's of results. Perhaps this is one of those self-aggrandizing European research projects after all. Bing seems to find thousands of hits. Still too much uncertainty and too much to sift through for me to support deletion. --Kvng (talk) 15:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes references need to be improved and I've just added banners requesting such. Remeber, however, that an article doesn't qualify for deletion just for having no references establishing notability. It qualifies if there are no such reference in existence. It seems quite clear to me that there are qualifying references for this topic, they've just not been added to the article yet. --Kvng (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, TerriersFan (talk) 19:15, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: No evidence has been presented of coverage from multiple independent sources, "niche" or otherwise. Europe does not lack for independent scientific and academic journals, and articles in them describing this project in "significant detail" would satisfy the GNG. Failing that, whatever buzz this project may have engendered amongst its participants or discussed at conferences is irrelevant. Simply asserting that such sources exist is not good enough; in order to keep the article, they must be produced and they must be verifiable.

    That being said, at the risk of offending you by explaining something I claim you're not understanding, Max, you've drawn a parallel many inexperienced Wikipedia editors make. To use your example, George Lucas' interviews are indeed a valid source for information about Star Wars. But since he is not "independent," his interviews cannot be used to support the notability of Star Wars or any related topic. That is the distinction. Certainly, should the notability of XtreemOS be established, sources linked with the project can be considered for useful information. They cannot, of course, be used as evidence of its notability. Ravenswing 14:56, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Editors participating in AfD have an obligation to look beyond the contents of the article to determine if the topic is notable. We do not delete poorly written or poorly cited articles> So long as we believe the topic is notable, we improve them. Please click on some of the find sources links at the top of this AfD and see whats out there on the topic. --Kvng (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reply: It is a longstanding part of policy that it is not the responsibility of editors advocating deletion to find multiple, reliable, independent sources which describe the subject in "significant detail," but that of editors advocating keeping articles to do so. If you have yourself found any sources which are not the work of people connected with this project, kindly supply them. So far the bare couple you have provided do not qualify, something readily obvious from a casual glance. Ravenswing 09:06, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is not my understanding. Is this policy documented somewhere? --Kvng (talk) 15:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
WP:V. Ravenswing 18:54, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there are a few non-trivial steps between what you say above and WP:V. I found WP:DISCUSSAFD and WP:RESCUE to be more helpful. It looks like you have a point. I still do not support deletion; I'm stubborn, I guess. --Kvng (talk) 15:12, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge or Keep. At least the web site implies that the technology might outlive the project (which was clearly ephemeral). Although the "crystal ball" argument would probably say delete or userify until there is evidence of that survival. In fact, it lokos like the 3.0 release did not happen when it was claimed. One place to merge might be European Grid Infrastructure since that is evolving into covering various grid-related projects in Europe. However, I see no evidence that EGI actually uses XtreemOS, or for that matter independent sources seem the real issue. Other places to merge might be XtreemFS (not clear the relation) or Virtual Organization (Grid computing) since it seems the main goal of XtreemOS was to support VOs on Linux? W Nowicki (talk) 20:03, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Bushranger One ping only 08:57, 17 October 2011 (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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