Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/OpenPsion

OpenPsion

Stub on non-notable Linux distribution. Chealer 04:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I, of course, object to the deletion of this article. We may be a small linux distribution (no pun intended), but we are hardly non-notable. We have a small but dedicated development group. Deletion of this article will also require editing the pages of all the Psion PDAs (Psion 5, NetBook, Series 7, etc.) to remove the OpenPsion wikilink. In my opinion, it is valuable having these links so that those having such PDAs know that the linux OS is available to them. This distribution is unique to Psions, but it is also well known among those who have linux on ARM devices. There is value here; don't delete. Bdushaw 05:01, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. You seem to be arguing
1. that dedication implies notability;
2. that virtue implies notability (so that Wikipedia should advertise the product to Psion PDA users);
3. that an article should be kept to spare editors and 'bots the trouble of removing a few links.
—SlamDiego_←T 05:25, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind about the logical dance you want. I say that anyone looking up the Psion PDAs on wikipedia may well like to know that linux can run on them - to say that this is "advertising a product" is one way to spin it, I suppose. I noted that the OpenPsion "distribution" has had a usefulness beyond Psions - it has been useful for most ARM PDAs. Why is it so important to delete the article? Where is the case that OpenPsion is "non-notable"? That seems an opinion and not an educated one. If it is a matter of developing the article some more I can do that, and encourage others to do the same. I noted on the wikipedia pages regarding linux distributions that there were few distributions designed for ARM cpus (and many linux distributions of less notablility than OpenPsion). I considered starting an article summarizing distributions for ARM cpus; OpenPsion would figure prominently there. It is a notable distribution for ARM cpus. Bdushaw 08:26, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than cast aspersions on my motivations (an uncivil, speculative personal attack), you should have just clarified your argument or replaced it a better one. —SlamDiego_←T 09:41, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Its late and I am prone to be annoyed just now; so sorry. Seems to me you were overly cute rather than constructive. That's how it was received anyways. "virtue implies notability"? Let me pause for several minutes while I try to figure that one out... Better to ask some direct questions to constructively get to the bottom of the issue. (an uncivil, speculative personal attack) is cutting both ways here now. Bdushaw 11:19, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is hard to be moved by the apology which it is immediately followed by an attempt not merely to excuse but to vindicate the personal attack. I was, in fact, very direct.

So let's try this again, roundabout: Although even now you haven't told us why it would be helpful to Psion PDA users to know about this product, you seem to believe that it is because the product has some sort of virtue. But Wikipedia doesn't ordinarily accept virtue as sufficient to imply notability; doing so moves Wikipedia into deeper, murkier waters of prescription.

Unless you can show me how the issue of personal attacks ever was cutting both ways, I am removing myself from this discussion. —SlamDiego_←T 21:46, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would go further here and say that Linux is the only way for older Psion PDAs to be usable in the context of 2007 and beyond. Both the Psion 7 and netbook have a unique form-factor and as such are noteable devices in their own right. Stevedicks 09:20, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- If that is so, how about adding a sentence or so at Psion? --B. Wolterding 14:29, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to state as well that deleting this page will keep us from contributing to the possibilities of continuing the life of these widespread Psion PDA's. I don't want to go into the advantages of the devices because it may cause a useless discussion. However, I do feel that wikipedia is a good source , also for 'non notable' things and should stay that way.

Victor

Keep Quickie 12:24, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I am, actually, a bit confused by the arguments given above. By common consensus, Wikipedia is not meant to describe everything that is interesting or useful. It is meant to cover everything that is notable. The notability criteria specify what "notability" means in this context: There must be independent sources which cover the topic. That might be press coverage (press, not blogs), or books describing this software in detail, or similar. Unless such sources are provided, the topic just fails the criteria. Don't take this as a personal attack: That's the way we deal with all topics here. Currently, I don't see that OpenPsion is notable; maybe it will be one day, and then it deserves an article. By the way, Bdushaw, your comments above suggest that you are one of the authors of the software. In this case, you may have a conflict of interest, and should be very careful about editing the article. --B. Wolterding 13:15, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep. As per Bdushaw. I seem to find bad faith nominators as uncivilized. This article needs to be cleaned up though. It's still notable and Wikipedia's Bots doesn't have to do with removing links.--Edtropolis 13:22, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

it is perhaps a small, but unique Distro. And there aren't such few users that you could think... the 100th fork of debian without any big differents is perhaps unnotabily, but OpenPsion is the only Distro which works on the very widespread psions. Additionally, many people used the Psion as an entry for programming arm machines, for which this distro is still ideal. So: Keep -Mifritscher 13:23, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete unless any third-party reliable sources are provided to establish notability. Uniqueness is not an indicator of notability. WP:USEFUL is not a valid argument either. 220.227.179.4 14:13, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'm seeing a problem here, in that the people who want to keep this article are not recognizing why their arguments are not convincing. There is no bad faith here, since the nominator is quite rightly concerned that there are many minor Linux distributions with articles on Wikipedia. I'm sorry, but Wikipedia isn't Distrowatch. Not every Linux distro gets a page no questions ask. The fact is, this article has no third-party sources, no establishment of actual notability as per WP:ORG. I'm sure many of the users of this distro who have spoken here think the distro is useful to them, but if nobody else has noticed, is it really that important? Perhaps not. And really, accusing a person of bad faith in a case like this? It's not going to strengthen your argument, it's just going to convince me that you don't even realize you don't have that much of one. Seriously, the best way to get an article kept is to provide real sources, not to say the nominator is in bad faith when that's not clearly so at all. There are cases where it is a problem, certainly. This isn't one of them. Mister.Manticore 14:21, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I do likely have a conflict of interest. Nevertheless... I've taken a look at notability and I think I see what the issue is now, so the nomination for deletion may have a point. However, let me argue otherwise: the Psion PDAs are old and the linux distribution for them is non-commercial. We are/were not likely to get the sort of press coverage, articles written, etc. as formally required for notability; but in this case I'd ask for some slack. Other similar articles (GPE Palmtop Environment, Familiar Linux, OpenZaurus, OPIE user interface, Maemo, Qtopia; even the articles on the sundry Psion devices have no references...) suffer the same issue, but I don't think you could call them non-notable. A google search for "openpsion" (or "psilinux" the former name) produces endless hits, however; its just the usual material associated with opensource development - mail lists, web pages, etc. (There WERE several articles on linux on the newer NetBook Pro, a commercial device, but they seem to have disappeared now.) So (a) our fate is tied to an archaic PDA hardware; the distribution is uniquely Psion (but has proved useful for other ARM devices), (b) I argue that we should not be penalized (lack of references) for being non-commercial opensource, and, again, (c) there is still value here - anyone looking up Psion PDAs at this point is likely to want to know about a possible OS upgrade. I noted that one option was to merge the article into another more substantial one - that would be acceptable, but I couldn't say which article that would be (something like "linux on ARM devices"?) Bdushaw 18:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And also... I note that Alan Cox was on our mailing list for some time until he bought a Nokia 770 (a commercial device with lots of references). Ergo, OpenPsion is a notable linux distribution. :) Bdushaw 18:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, let me address the concerns you've expressed about these other articles. First off, it's pretty clear that the original nominator is going through and nominating several individual non-notable Linux distros. Take a look at Chealer's contribs. Do you seriously expect a nomination of every distro at once? That wouldn't be a good thing. It's obvious to me that a lot of them have been added without real thought or consideration of Wikipedia's principles. Probably no malice, but some thoughtlessness. Besides, this is an argument that's actually not highly respected, see WP:WAX for an explanation as to why, but it's basically, so what about those other articles, maybe they need to be deleted or improved as well. And giving your article some slack isn't a solution either. Yes, it is a handicap not being a major commercial distro, but is it worth compromising Wikipedia's principles of WP:V to cover your distro? And what about the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of other similar groups? Yeah, letting people know things is important, but there are limits. If you want to publicize your distro, then I suggest finding other avenues first. I wouldn't object to a bit in the section on Psion computers, and if there's an applicable section of the broader Linux article, it might be worth including there.

Finally, no, the presence of even as personally a notable person as Cox isn't proof of this distro's notability. I'm sure he belongs to a lot of mailing lists and does a lot of things. It'd be one thing if he wrote a book or article on the distro, or gave an interview, but it's doubtful that a primary source in this case would be acceptable as proof of notability. Mister.Manticore 19:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are basically right. My argument was that the other articles I listed are indeed notable - Familiar linux, Maemo are well known - but seem to fall into the same category as openpsion with lack of references. There is more to the story here than the strictly defined notability; I am searching for where that boundary is. I referred not to all the other articles in wikipedia with similar problems, but to articles that are very similar in nature to OpenPsion. Articles referring to linux on ARM devices. Because they are all opensource with informal development, they all lack solid references; I don't think such references exist. So what do we do about that? It seems unreasonable to delete all these articles, as they would be eventually under the criteria suggested here. Bdushaw 20:09, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article on psion is basically about the history of the Psion company; it sure seems to me that a discussion of OpenPsion linux does not really belong there. One option would be to include a few more sentences on each of the Psion PDA pages, but that seems rather redundant (some of the PDA pages can be combined, e.g. netbook and Series 7). What about creating the Linux on ARM Devices article, and merging Familiar linux, openzaurus, openpsion, maemo, etc. into one larger article? Then redirect openpsion, openzaurus, etc. to it. How about that? Bdushaw 20:43, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Per the smiley face (:)) that was tongue-in-cheek. Bdushaw 20:09, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't know if they are notable or not, but if they aren't referenced, that IS a problem. It seems quite reasonable to me to delete them if they can't be sourced, as it's much more unreasonable to keep them when they aren't sourced. That's more of a problem than anything else. The issue of covering Linux on Arm devices is another issue, but it would probably be best to discuss it with the Linux Wikiproject and probably take it as a spin-off from the Linux kernel portability and supported architectures page. Which itself needs improvement, but that's another matter. Mister.Manticore 21:11, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I note that Chealer has recently gone through most of the distribution articles at Comparison_of_Linux_distributions with various fixes. Most of those articles are completely unsourced stubs, hence would qualify as non-notable. So why does OpenPsion get the special treatment? Given the plethora of linux distributions (and articles about them), OpenPsion is at least uniquely identified with Psion devices. As I say, there is a larger issue here; Wikipedia does not seem likely to tolerate the deletion of 90% of the articles on linux distributions... But P.S. I see that many of these articles are indeed up for deletion. Bdushaw 22:36, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as I was just about to point out to you, Chealer has indeed nominated many of those articles for deletion, so there's really no special treatment going on here. This article will be held to the same standards as any other. As for how it'll be received, it doesn't seem to have attracted much protest. Mister.Manticore 23:40, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Me again... I've just been going over the Wikipedia policies for deletion and notability. I would first like to point out that when this article was first nominated for deletion, that it would have been helpful to state more clearly the reasons why. About half of this discussion above could have been avoided if we had had a more specific starting point; not all of us are versed in what "notable" means to Wikipedians (we should be, true, but you know...). I also point out that there was been no attempt to fix or correct the article before nominating for deletion, per policy. Before deleting, a preferred option is to merge, and indeed a consensus above seems to be to merge - where I don't know yet, but we would have been better off having a merge discussion prior to the delete discussion. Nor was there a warning about notability posted ahead of time. The process in nominating this article for deletion has been flawed, alas. I think I will post a message to Chealer asking him to include a better description of his reasons for nominating articles for deletion; a simple cut and paste blurb would suffice. Lastly, at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes, I noted "Programming languages are notable if somewhat widely used; Google is a reasonable test", and in other places where the number of google hits was accepted as a reason to justify notability. Openpsion gets 992 google hits; Psilinux 502 hits - does that then make it notable? Let's keep the article for now and work to merge it to an as-yet-undetermined more appropriate place. Bdushaw 02:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, a longer, more explicit articulation of the concerns would have been helpful. I try to at least link to the relevant policy page myself, but I suspect Chealer just decided to be brief because there are a fair number of these distros to go through. May be a case of a bit of haste in the face of a long and tedious task. Perhaps not ideal, but I'm not going to worry about it too much. If you want to suggest a more expansive description in the nomination, that's fine with me. Nor is it actually required to try to "fix" an article before nominating it. The steps in "Before nominating an AfD" are to consider, which I think if you're familiar with the work Chealer has done on nominating these articles (which started some while ago actually), is something I'm comfortable accepting was done. Certainly, it's worth looking for sources, and I hope Chealer did that, but I see no reason to assume this nomination was sufficiently flawed as to warrant any action being taken. Could it have been done better? I suppose, but nothing major was done wrong. Mister.Manticore 02:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And no, I don't see a consensus to merge, nor do I see a reason to keep this article. Sorry, but you've not produced any third party sources, and the content of the article is such that IF it was determined that there was an appropriate place to put it, it'd be easy enough to recreate from scratch. Also the concept of a raw google-test has fallen into disfavor. Very few people will be swayed by them. Mister.Manticore 02:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But hey, I do understand your concerns, and I'd like to commend you on your civility and reasonableness. A lot of times an editor of an article can get quite irate over a nomination, but you haven't done that. I hope I've explained things a bit better for you, and you understand the situation more clearly. If not, drop me a line on my talk page. Mister.Manticore 02:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am annoyed again, I am afraid. Chealer states that he is now done with his comprehensive review. He has left many, many articles on linux distributions that do not satisfy the criteria of notability as we have discussed above. I was with you all, and read the documentation, and listened to you, and thought I understood your position. Partly this was so that I could understand the policies of Wikipedia better. Those arguing for the deletion of the article stuck to policy, which is the proper thing to do. But now it comes to pass that indeed there was other, unstated criteria to determine notability - which seems mostly arbitrary. Chealer states on his Talk page: Bdushaw, the approach to correct the article is not useful when the issue is notability. There's nothing that can be done to the article that will increase the topic's notability. Which tells me that (a) the decision was preordained, and (b) the decision has been subjective. If there is to be a policy it has to be uniformly applied. If there are to be criteria for notability beyond what is stated in the Wikipedia policy pages, then they need to be stated. The decision to put this article up for deletion was NOT based on the strict notability criteria, but on someone's opinion. I am partly annoyed here not so much for the OpenPsion page, but as a matter of policy, procedure, and fairness. Chealer apparently has no intention of putting the articles: GPE Palmtop Environment, Familiar Linux, OpenZaurus, OPIE user interface, Maemo, Qtopia up for deletion - Why? What is the policy? What is it that deems those pages notable, but OpenPsion not notable? The notability argument seems to be one of convenience to support an opinion.

Going back to basic principles, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Is the OpenPsion article encyclopedic? Bdushaw 19:53, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, perhaps Chealer is just tired of doing the task, and not an assumption that the remaining articles meet any standards or not. Not having seen any statement by anybody on them, I decline to assume anything. I don't know about Chealer's words, I'm not sure what is being said there, it honestly doesn't quite make sense to me. (Though I don't read anything into it, it just seems unclear). I think what it means is the problem is not in the contents of the article, but with the lack of third-party sources. But I could be wrong, so perhaps you should ask for a clarification. If you feel those other distros might well need to be deleted, feel free to nominate them yourself. Or heck, I will. Mister.Manticore 21:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to beat up anyone really, but I do want to have a consistent policy. It seems so very arbitrary - note that Chealer has recent edit history on Familiar Linux...its not like he didn't have time to look at it. (Nominating such articles as Familiar Linux and Maemo for deletion will likely create a firestorm...!! But, yes, they should be sourced.) Anyways, I have scrounged around and listed several references to the article now. Per my comment above, most of the references occur at times when there is a commercial involvment (Calcaria.net or Psion's recent look at linux). Also adding to the "notability" criteria (WP:CORP) is that OpenPsion now has a 9 year lifespan and is certainly international, if ethereal, in character.

AFD is arbitrary, because it's run by human beings, not machines, and there's little chance of a systematic coverage of any subject. (In fact, this is generally applicable to Wikipedia as well) If you want to nominate the other articles for the same reason, then more power to you, but I wouldn't assume anything about it not being done by Chealer. It's inconsistent sure, but only because we're human beings. And it's more a question of practice than policy. I think you'll rarely say "But we don't need sources for this" getting much support anywhere. And speaking of your sources, I'm not seeing much coverage of "OpenPsion" in them, but rather "Psion's involvement with Linux" which is a slightly different (though related subject). Which might support a merger to the article on Psion and coverage there, but I'm not convinced that this particular distro is notable from it. Mister.Manticore 23:59, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - I haven't even voted yet (so it appears on the voting talley table, even though deletion discussions are not a poll). Bdushaw 20:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Its signficant as essentially the only software left for Psion, and also in the broader context of the Psion/Symbian/Linux will-they won't they history. Could be folded into the Psion article perhaps but it seems worth keeping AlanCox 00:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]