Wikipedia:Software notability

This is a failed guideline. Consensus in its favor was not established within a reasonable amount of time.

This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more WikiProjects on how notability may be interpreted within their area of interest.

This information is not a formal Wikipedia policy or guideline, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

This page in a nutshell: Before it rises to the level of being an encyclopedia subject, software must be notable, with significant coverage in multiple independent, notable and reliable third-party sources

For the purpose of this essay, meant to provide commentary on the notability of software by measuring its technical or commercial achievements, software includes all code or programming meant to be operated by a computer or dedicated computing device such as a game console.

Software applications are products, and fall under Wikipedia:Notability (companies and corporations). This page gives rough suggestions which a number of Wikipedia editors use to decide if certain software applications should have an article on Wikipedia.

That Wikipedia is not a primary source, nor a free wiki host, is a long-established fact. Wikipedia articles are not intended to be locations where primary source documentation for software packages is hosted. Wikipedia is also not a directory of all software packages that exist or that have ever existed.

Definitions

For the purpose of this proposal:

General interest means independent of, and having an audience broader than:
- business, management, or investment communities; or
- information technology or computer programming communities.
Publications that focus on software whose chief purpose is entertainment (i.e. computer and console games) are general interest publications. Computing and trade publications are general interest sources if they have or have had versions printed on paper, and those printed versions regularly appear or have regularly appeared on magazine racks and newsstands that also carry non-computing or business related publications.

Historical or technical significance means that software verifiably has:
- introduced an important technical innovation; or
- has been recognized as significant in the development of a sector
in such a way that makes that software distinguish itself above its competitors in the field or sector in which it is marketed and sold. Claims of historical or technical significance must be verified in independent, neutral, third party sources; self published claims of significance do not meet this standard.

Published means available in an installed standard version or series of standard versions, whether these versions are:
- distributed on electronic media;
- made available for download, or
- installed as part of the operating system on newly built systems.

Criteria

Software is notable if it meets any one of these criteria:

Criteria requiring general interest sources

It has been the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable general interest, independent secondary sources;
It has won a recognized award that is reported in multiple general interest sources;
It has been the subject of significant product reviews circulated in general interest sources;

Criteria not requiring general interest sources

The software is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs.^[1]
The software is the subject of multiple printed third party manuals or instruction books written by independent authors and published by independent publishers;
It is published software that has been recognized as having historical or technical significance by multiple reliable sources, even if those sources are not general interest sources;

Editors should evaluate various aspects of the coverage: the depth, duration, geographical scope, diversity and reliability of the coverage, as well whether the coverage is routine.

The depth of coverage in the sources should be significant and directly about the software. Coverage of the software in passing, such as being part of a how-to document, do not normally constitute significant coverage but should be evaluated

The duration of coverage in sources should show lasting impact. While notability is not temporary a burst of coverage (often around product announcements) does not automatically make a product notable.

Software that has been extensively reported on as the product of a local company in a small region may not be evidence of notability. The source of the reporting is important to evaluating whether the software is only important to a limited geographical scope.

Promotion

Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopaedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the company, corporation, product, or service. (See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material.) The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or of its manufacturer, creator, or vendor) have actually considered the company, corporation, product or service notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it.

Writing about software

Creating an article about software you have personally developed is strongly discouraged. It is indeed easy for an author to overestimate the notability of their work. If such work is notable, someone else will eventually start an article about it.

Software that can be proved to have a consistent number of users (beside the creator(s) and their friends) but do not meet the above criteria may be merged into the article describing their main functionality (for example, an article about a random disk editor may be merged into a section of disk editor.)

Once notability is established, primary sources may be used to verify some of the article's content.

Acceptable secondary sources do not include:

Press releases; advertising for the company, corporation, organization, or group; and other works where the company, corporation, organization, or group talks about itself—whether published by the company, corporation, organization, or group itself, or re-printed by other people. Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopaedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the company, corporation, club, organization, product, or service. A primary test of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or of its manufacturer, creator, or vendor) have actually considered the company, corporation, product or service notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it. Material that is self-published, or published at the direction of the subject of the article, would be a primary source and falls under different policies.
Works carrying merely trivial coverage; such as (for example) appearances in download directories or listings of available software, records of trade show appearances by vendors, and similar listings or directories.

Footnotes

^ This criterion does not include software written specifically for study in educational programs, but only independent works deemed sufficiently significant to be the subject of study themselves. This criterion should not apply to software merely used in instruction.

[academic-1] This criterion does not include software written specifically for study in educational programs, but only independent works deemed sufficiently significant to be the subject of study themselves. This criterion should not apply to software merely used in instruction.

[1]