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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Evelyn Harthbrooke (talk | contribs) at 16:05, 4 May 2023 (fix my word salad). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Firefox version history

AfDs for this article:

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Firefox version history (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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The page is currently a very long change log listing the verisons of firefox and the changes brought with them.

which goes against WP:NOTCHANGELOG 1keyhole (talk) 12:31, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Computing and Internet. Shellwood (talk) 13:20, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete – per WP:NOT. At the very least the hidden tables and crystal ball should be removed as done in these edits: [1]. GA-RT-22 (talk) 13:47, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep – for the very simple reason that there is no corresponding delete request for Google Chrome version history. All of the same arguments apply, but there is no corresponding movement. Yoasif (talk) 14:14, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    that is isn't a valid arugment see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS 1keyhole (talk) 18:39, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Yoasif (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoelleJay (talk • contribs) 00:38, April 25, 2023 (UTC)
  • Delete, we are not a hobby-site for those obsessed with detailed update histories of software. An encyclopaedic history of a major bit of software, drawing on a range of sources, is one thing. A database of updates cataloguing every announcement by the manufacturer, based almost entirely on these primary sources is quite another. And if the best argument that can be made for keeping it is that we have similar rubbish in other articles, get rid of them too. We should use the same test as we do for everything: is it significant and notable? Bill Gates is notable, but the fact he used the lavatory last Tuesday is not, and need not be catalogued in WP. Firefox is notable; every itty-bitty iterative change in Firefox is not. Elemimele (talk) 14:28, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a difficult issue. Firefox since version 4 has been an "evergreen" browser where the version doesn't matter as long as you're using the latest. Even Mozilla is moving away from wiki based software documentation to use a more dynamic database instead. Maybe it's time all the various version history articles on Wikipedia be migrated to a version tracking database project? 2A00:23EE:17C0:2F78:58CC:B76:4D26:29CA (talk) 15:37, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep – I use this article regularly. It goes beyond a changelog. Its a historical representation of the evolution of Firefox and combined with other article the entire browser field. If this article is against policy then all articles in Category:History of software (and probably more sections from countless articles) should be deleted and Wikipedia will become poorer because of it Chris Ssk talk 15:44, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    See WP:ITSUSEFUL. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:12, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - such information is useful and other examples exist of such pages that concensus is to keep such as Google Chrome version history, if this page is to be deleted shouldnt the rest at the same time be submitted for deletion? Popeter45 (talk) 19:24, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    just submitted that article for deletation since it's also violation of WP:NOTCHANGELOG 1keyhole (talk) 20:22, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    While i disagree with your proposal i commend you for your conistency, as this had expanded to the larger area of browser history may i suggest instead to revoke this AfD and instead raise one shared one as would lead to a larger userbase for discussion and a larger consensus? Popeter45 (talk) 16:28, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - As several others have suggested, this page in it's entirety is extremely useful. This page has been active for YEARS and is not bothering anyone. If you don't want detailed information, then simply don't click on [show] and nothing detailed will be shown. It's as simple as that. If we delete this page then where does it end? Are we going to delete all the other pages with Version History? This is Wikipedia, people come here for information! LESS is NOT MORE in this case. ShockingOutcome (talk)— ShockingOutcome (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. 20:01, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This reasoning falls into WP:ITSUSEFUL I'm afraid. Version histories are vulnerable to being targetted for AfD due to NOTCHANGELOG as others have mentioned TheInsatiableOne (talk) 09:11, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Page contains useful information, and many other pieces of software have similar version history pages. I will also note that someone reverted the deletion of a huge (and possibly redundant) table just before this was nominated for deletion. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence, but a deletion nomination is not a useful response to a revert that you disagree with. Klausness (talk) 21:18, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you have a policy-based reason to keep? 1keyhole (talk) 18:35, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you have a policy-based reason to delete? Given that this is notable and useful information, the default should be to keep (as with similar pages for release histories of other notable software products). The WP:NOTCHANGELOG issue can be fixed with appropriate editing. Deletion is never an appropriate response to a page that just needs editing. Klausness (talk) 12:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The amount of editing required to circumvent NOTCHANGELOG would turn this into a completely different page. It would make sense to delete this one, and make a History of Firefox or suchlike. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 12:26, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Klausness (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. 00:14, 25 April 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoelleJay (talk • contribs) 00:38, April 25, 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @JoelleJay, which editor would have expressed this concern, and what reason would they have for such concern? For the record, no one has asked me to contribute to this AfD. While I have not been as active on wikipedia recently as I have been in the past, I have contributed to numerous AfDs, so it is not odd that I chose to contribute when I saw that there was an (unjustified, in my opinion) AfD on this article. Klausness (talk) 20:44, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You don't have to have been asked directly to !vote or to participate in a discussion for it to be canvassing. Someone posted a highly non-neutral notice on a partisan, off-wiki subreddit about how the article was being handled and you followed it and participated in discussions about it. That arguably qualifies as multiple different types of canvassing:
    • Campaigning: Posting a notification of discussion that presents the topic in a non-neutral manner.
    • Vote-stacking: Posting messages to users selected based on their known opinions (which may be made known by a userbox, user category, or prior statement). Vote-banking involves recruiting editors perceived as having a common viewpoint for a group, similar to a political party, in the expectation that notifying the group of any discussion related to that viewpoint will result in a numerical advantage, much as a form of prearranged vote stacking.
    • Stealth canvassing: Contacting users off-wiki (by e-mail or IRC, for example) to persuade them to join in discussions (unless there is a specific reason not to use talk pages)
    • Soliciting support other than by posting direct messages, such as using a custom signature with a message promoting a specific position on any issue being discussed.
    JoelleJay (talk) 21:19, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - No reason to delete this or any part of it, very valuable data that can be very useful for future references is here and the only "maintenance" required is adding new info for future versions, something that takes 5 mins at most. Moongrimer (talk) 21:47, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixed: Details button on Crash Reporter.
This is WP:TRIVIA, not a highlight for a major release, and it does not belong on Wikipedia. (Those who find the current, exhaustive release notes are free to host them elsewhere if they find that level of detail useful.) We can also probably condense the presentation of minor & patch releases. Perhaps each release within a major release can share a single highlights cell? Any highlights from releases after the major release can be explicitly labelled. bb010g (talk) 03:23, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Bb010g (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoelleJay (talk • contribs) 00:38, April 25, 2023 (UTC)
 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not § WP:NOTCHANGELOG being ignored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but I agree it needs to be massively shorter, the page is ridiculously detailed. Yes to all the main features ever introduced to Firefox, with the releases they were introduced in, in release order. No to exacting changelogs. Also no to merging into Firefox, having the features listed out on a timeline / version history makes it much easier to place them in context and history than trying to read it as prose. 147.147.154.61 (talk)— 147.147.154.61 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. 00:29, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: If you delete it, someone is going to create the site again (someone has to care for it since it's always up to date and including too many details). Besides that, if you want to clean it up (and yes, that is needed) it's easier to get stuff out than to start from a blank page. Qxyz123 (talk) 02:06, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify. WP:NOTCHANGELOG is very clear that this page cannot be kept and per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS it doesn't matter how many editors !vote to keep; we are forbidden from doing so and arguments that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS doesn't change this. However, it is possible that editors may find a consensus to adjust the policy to support keeping articles like these; to support this I prefer draftifying this article over deleting it, so that if such a consensus it is easy to restore this article to mainspace. BilledMammal (talk) 08:03, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Comment It is clearly against WP:NOT policy spefically the section on that states wikipedia is not a change log. The article is clearly a change log it list almost every change that is brought in when firefox updated. It was previously voted that the article should be merged. however when someone tried to perform the merge mutiple times it was reverted.
1keyhole (talk) 14:12, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@1keyhole I'd suggest striking your delete vote given you are the nominator and from WP:AFDFORMAT: Nomination already implies that the nominator recommends deletion (unless indicated otherwise), and nominators should refrain from repeating this. Skynxnex (talk) 14:42, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can i change it to a comment or is that frowned upon? 1keyhole (talk) 14:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can use <del>'''Delete'''</del> <ins>'''Comment'''</ins> or similar to show that intent. Skynxnex (talk) 14:48, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
thank you for providing extact syntax 1keyhole (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I agree this does need to be merged. But why does it keep getting reverted? PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 00:07, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the article because the subject itself is notable, and I agree with others that having it on Wikipedia is highly useful. (It's often difficult to trace the long-term development of a browser over time (info is scattered over many pages, links go dead, etc.) Having the information all in one place is invaluable for researchers, developers, and presumably users.) Moreover, Wikipedia has a long-established history of documenting salient changes in noteworthy software projects, and Firefox assuredly meets that standard — hence deleting the article outright would be a significant policy change. .... With that being said, however, the current format of the article is horrid and absolutely violates WP:NOTCHANGELOG. A lot of it is repetitive, trivial, and looks like it was copy-pasted from blogs or release notes. Note that Firefox early version history has a considerably better presentation in its first sections. I think a merge and substantial cleanup would be a better outcome. (I'd also note that some early versions have their own articles like Firefox 3.0, which offers a good example of how WP can cover version history well.) – The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 01:39, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The result last time was merge the pages when people to implement it was just reverted. 1keyhole (talk) 01:42, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    So I looked up the merge, since you've mentioned it a few times. It's only part of the story and somewhat misleading. I dug through the relevant article and talk page histories to understand how they've developed over time. I'll leave a summary below for anyone interested — please do correct me if I'm missing anything. (I'll use "FVH" to refer to Firefox version history and "HOF" for History of Firefox.):
    • 2011: The first substantial discussion about splitting up HOF occurred on its talk page, based on how long the article was becoming and lengthy loading times in current browsers.
    • 2012: In February, HOF was split. The table of release details was moved to FVH (which until then was only a redirect). The detailed descriptions covering Firefox 5 and onward were split into History of Firefox (Rapid release development cycle). In April, however, a discussion on the Firefox talk page reached a consensus that the rapid-release article should be re-combined with HOF, along with detailed History info from the main Firefox article at the time. This was done.
    • 2017 – 2018: sporadic chatter about splitting up version tables on both FVH and HOF talk pages. Objections were raised in October '17 to FVH on WP:NOTCHANGELOG grounds, but participants agreed that deleting the article entirely would be too extreme.
    • January 2019: the first AFD for FVH was proposed. The closer said it was a "complicated close" but also said that there was clearly no consensus for deletion. The closer decided to merge the article into the main Firefox article, which led to several objections on the talk page, and that merge was reverted. (I believe this is the one you've referred to.)
    • February – April 2019: an extensive discussion took place on Talk:History of Firefox about what to do with the version history information, mostly centering around merging FVH and HOF. An initial merge of FVH → HOF met with objections because of the size of the article produced, and was reverted as the user working on it lacked time to clean it up. Soon afterward a merge of HOF → FVH was completed, and has stood since then. This is the basis of the current article.
    • May 2019 – December 2022: discussions on the FVH talk page built consensus that the article ought to be split up to account for how large it had grown. This was started in September 2019 when Firefox early version history was split from FVH (revision link), but has not progressed.
    I'd like to make a few points in light of this history:
    1. The current FVH article is the outcome of a couple decades of work & discussion by dozens (maybe even hundreds?) of editors. I feel that one needs a very thorough argument to make a case for deleting that. "A prior merge went awry" and "some of the content doesn't fit WP policy" aren't sufficient in my opinion.
    2. Prior delete proposals failed to gather consensus. To again propose deletion now, one needs to show that the article has worsened, the subject has somehow lost notability, or WP policy has changed. I don't see any of those — if anything the article has improved since the 1st AfD due to the HOF merge (which was completed.)
    3. WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP. I know this isn't a universally-accepted axiom, but in this case I believe it applies. There's a lot of good content in the article, all thoroughly referenced. It's by no means a hopeless case.
    I'll close with a comment. For this article and the other browser version AFDs nominated with it, the outcomes need to be consistent. In particular, I'd like to ask the closing admin to be careful making any large changes unilaterally (merges, redirects), given that the last time that happened it appears to have muddied/possibly derailed an ongoing attempt to clean up the article. – The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 14:58, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep it's clearly an encyclopedic topic for software such as Firefox. Should be cut down some but we can use Common sense as mentioned at WP:NOTCHANGELOG (same rationale as on the on-going AfDs: Firefox, Chrome, and iOS). Skynxnex (talk) 23:04, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It makes more sense to delete it is a just a list of software update changes that will continue to grow and we really don't need what changes were introduced to 30 verison when when we are currently past 105 verisons. 1keyhole (talk) 14:11, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Neither of those are reasons to delete this article, to be clear. The concern a page might grow bigger is a potential reason to split (like we could cut down the section of versions 5 through 9 and have that be its own article if they are notable enough) or a sign to make sure we cut out unneeded details. "we really don't need" also isn't a reason to delete since the general topic of changes in Firefox releases is an on-going encyclopedic topic given the amount of reliable, independent coverage many of its releases have received over the years. Skynxnex (talk) 16:06, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    My view is this
    • there is Wikipedia policy against changelogs WP:NOTCHANGELOG
    • Simply defination of a change log is a document that lists changes brought in by a software update.
    • Firefox version history is an article that documents changes brought in by software updates and that is currently over 100 major verisons.
    • common sense says that will continue to grow if result is too keep the article.
    1keyhole (talk) 17:36, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The actual policy is not just "against changelogs". It's against Exhaustive logs of software updates and it assumes there are articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article and that we should use Common sense must be applied with regard to the level of detail to be included. So it's not a policy that absolutely bars articles like this. This article is probably, in good faith attempts at being complete, too detailed under WP:NOTCHANGELOG. The attempt April 14 seems like a decent attempt to get started but since it was reverted, discussion should be held on the talk page about what sort of version would be acceptable. Not just deleting the entire article since the history of Firefox versions is significant enough it'd almost surely justify splitting out from a main article by size alone, even heavily stripped down. Skynxnex (talk) 17:53, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I'm copying my initial comment from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IOS version history (2nd nomination) because the after reviewing the article, the rationale concerning this article is identical as that one. While the article does include some information that would perhaps fall under WP:NOTCHANGELOG, the article also contains history of the changes of the software written in prose that goes far beyond a simple changelog. Describing and detailing the version history of a given piece of software is not in itself a WP:NOTCHANGELOG issue. - Aoidh (talk) 01:13, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Aoidh, the vast majority of the prose is sourced directly to Mozilla -- out of the first 50 sources, only 8 are potentially independent. How much material directly on the topic can actually be written from secondary independent reliable sources? And how many of those sources are merely announcements or reviews for one specific version and don't comment on "version history" as a broader concept? JoelleJay (talk) 01:08, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Issues with the amount of primary sourcing currently in the article is a surmountable problem, one fixed via editing rather than deletion. Every issue raised by every delete rationale is solved by trimming the fat, not by deleting the article altogether. The question about "version history" as a broader concept isn't a concern. If a biography has independent sources discussion a person's history as an actor and others discussing their history as a singer, that still shows notability; we don't need to have specific sources that show the sum of their life to consider them notable. Likewise, sources discussing the version changes for a given version of Firefox is in aggregate more than enough to show notability for this WP:DETAIL article. - Aoidh (talk) 03:01, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Primary sources aren't a concern, if we accept the premise that Mozilla is an entirely reliable source on what changes they make to Firefox (which has precedent in our treatment of plot summaries, which we implicitly source to the primary book/movie). Forcing a reliance on secondary sources has no benefit, yet risks introducing the inevitable minor inaccuracies that even the best secondary sources are guilty of.
    The few things that only secondary sources could provide, like contextualization or analysis, can simply be brought in in addition to the primary sources. But replacing primary with secondary is otherwise useless busywork, just like it would be at the entirely primarily sourced yet FA-class List of Nobel Memorial Prize laureates in Economics. DFlhb (talk) 20:00, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. This is policy. Additionally, the article falls under NORG, which states that routine coverage of a product or a product line launch, sale, change, or discontinuance does not contribute to notability. Also, your example is a featured list, not an FA. JoelleJay (talk) 20:48, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Since it falls under and meets WP:NSOFT, meeting WP:NORG is not also required; articles do not need to meet every applicable notability guideline, just (ideally) the most relevant one. Since this article is about a piece of software, that would be the notability guideline specifically for software. However even within NORG, the article already has non-routine coverage in the sources[3][4][5]. - Aoidh (talk) 21:01, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    NSOFT is an essay, not a guideline. The article has to meet NORG. Per NOT and NOPAGE, not every subtopic receiving sigcov needs a standalone article when it can be appropriately handled in the parent. Trivial content like the exhaustive detailing of each update doesn't belong in any article, and if you remove that + the primary stuff how much is left? JoelleJay (talk) 02:17, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    See WP:ONLYESSAY; that criteria is not discounted just because it is an essay. Regardless, the article meets WP:GNG, WP:NSOFT, and WP:NORG. That not every subtopic receiving sigcov needs a standalone article may be true, but no persuasive argument has been made to show that this is the case for this particular article. As for how much would be left if you removed the primary sources, that's a discussion for the talk page; the size of the article is not grounds for deletion, especially when it's speculation on a hypothetical size that might occur at a later point. When the issues brought up by those arguing for deletion can be solved via editing, there is no cause for deletion. The article has to meet NORG. Whether that's true or not is moot because it does meet the criteria of that guideline, so there is no issue there. That primary sources are being used heavily in the article does not affect notability, because notability is already clearly established by other sources. WP:NOTCHANGELOG concerns are similarly issues with the presentation of the data within the article, not an issue with the article or its subject as a whole. These are all concerns solved via editing. Are they valid concerns? Absolutely. Are they cause for deletion? Not in the slightest. - Aoidh (talk) 02:46, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Essay notability criteria absolutely are discounted because they are from essays. This is why WP:N explicitly states Editors are cautioned that these WikiProject notability guidance pages should be treated as essays and do not establish new notability standards. The article must meet NORG because NORG explains what types of source contribute to GNG (as explained at WP:N: SNGs can also provide examples of sources and types of coverage considered significant for the purposes of determining notability, such as the [...] strict significant coverage requirements spelled out in the SNG for organizations and companies).
    And there is a persuasive argument for not having a standalone article: the fact that almost no content is sourced to SIRS, and what is is better served in the actual article on Firefox or possibly in a separate article on Firefox history in general that is not centered around documenting every single change in a release. NOTCHANGELOG says Use reliable third-party (not self-published or official) sources in articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article. Common sense must be applied with regard to the level of detail to be included. This suggests that no content at all should be supported only by official sources. Bringing the page into compliance with NOT would require going through 550,000 bytes and weeding out all info not sourced to SIRS, which would be such a monumental task that TNT is wholly justified. JoelleJay (talk) 23:34, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    As I said, it does meet WP:NORG so whether it also meets WP:NSOFT and what NSOFT itself means in terms of an essay is ultimately not relevant. I have seen WP:TNT articles and this is nowhere near that level. What WP:TNT itself says rules TNT out as an option, because even if we accept your arguments on face value, even what little is worth retraining renders WP:TNT inapplicable. The reliance on primary sources is solved via editing so that itself is not grounds for deletion, nor is it so monumental that it can't be done; it's already been done on another article. IOS version history went from just over 481k bytes on December 29 to just under 27k a couple of days later on January 1. There's now a discussion on whether that's a warranted level of trimming, but not only is that not monumental but it is relatively simple to do and has been done on similar articles before. - Aoidh (talk) 00:17, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It's a phenomenally beneficial policy, whose point is to keep out self-promotion and enforce a bare-minimum threshold for dueness. Neither are issues here, since editors have been quite competent at respecting dueness (in the prose, mind you) despite relying on mostly primary sources. I'm arguing against WP:TNT here, since Aoidh already addressed notability. DFlhb (talk) 21:52, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    How can you say DUENESS isn't an issue when it's impossible to even assess how DUE something is from primary nonindependent sources? Or that it's not promotional, when it's literally sourced to promotional material from Mozilla? OR is a content policy, not a suggestion that can just be handwaved away. TNT is absolutely applicable here. JoelleJay (talk) 02:28, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I can tell you that DUE is largely respected because I've kept up with secondary news about Firefox for roughly the last decade, and the prose correctly highlights major changes and additions of noteworthy web standards, while omitting irrelevant changes and irrelevant web standards. Intelligent editors can (and mostly have) used primary sources in a judicious way that keeps factual claims and discards (most) promotional claims. TNT is not applicable thanks to WP:PRESERVE, since the prose is not covered by WP:CANTFIX nor NOTCHANGELOG. WP:MINREF also provides ample "policy cover". But I don't like linking to this many policies in one reply; the bottom line is that my common sense tells me that most of the text is good, and secondary sources are easy to find for most of the prose. DFlhb (talk) 04:31, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That you believe the article meets DUE with primary sources is irrelevant to whether the content in the article is actually DUE and PROPORTIONAL, which are dependent on how the topic is discussed within secondary sources. If a particular class of details is only verifiable with official documents (or straight repetition of those docs even in indy sources), that class does not warrant inclusion in the article at all. In fact, NOT clearly says that descriptions of version history must use only secondary independent sources: Use reliable third-party (not self-published or official) sources in articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article. All article content that is only sourced to the company should be deleted. PRESERVE does not exempt articles from deletion policy: If an article on a notable topic severely fails the verifiability or neutral point of view policies, it may be reduced to a stub, or completely deleted by consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion. This article severely fails NPOV because almost all of it is directly from the company; extracting the remaining bits would be require sifting through hundreds of thousands of bytes and likely would leave us with essentially the same content found in the articles on each version/main article. JoelleJay (talk) 00:08, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:PRESERVE does apply, is policy, and as of May 3, I haven't seen any comment so far convincingly rebut it. You cite WP:V and WP:NPOV, clearly referring to WP:CANTFIX, but CANTFIX is about situations when it might be more appropriate to remove information from an article, not deleting the whole article. It does reference WP:V and WP:NPOV, but WP:V doesn't require that secondary sources be cited inline; merely that they exist. NPOV isn't a convincing argument either, since release notes are not "promotional"; they describe, in technical terms, changes that factually were made. Mozilla's changelogs are written by their engineers, not their marketing department.
    You seem to think that I, like other !keep voters, want the article to keep looking the way it does. I don't. It's a truly awful article. But it would be harder to make it GA-class from scratch, rather than from the existing content (hence, WP:NOTCLEANUP). DFlhb (talk) 15:14, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Aoidh. ResonantDistortion 21:57, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Aoidh's rationale "the article also contains history of the changes of the software written in prose" Lightburst (talk) 22:16, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per rationale by Aoidh. Mine is, that this version history is easier to find than the one at Mozilla, which organization is prone to move and remove historical information about its software as it pleases. -Mardus /talk 08:21, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Fails WP:GNG -- sources are overwhelmingly not independent. NOTCHANGELOG clearly applies to prose material as well, despite some nonsensical comments above. Avilich (talk) 21:46, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    despite some nonsensical comments above — My argument is identical to one Masem made in 2015, Masem being one of the early proponents of NOTCHANGELOG. I'll also respond to Sandstein here ("policy and cannot be overridden"): NOTCHANGELOG is about dueness. It states that changes that are not covered by secondary sources are undue. Here, the prose content would be substantially similar if all primary sources were replaced with secondary sources; hence, the prose plainly does not violate NOTCHANGELOG. WP:MINREF enjoys overwhelming consensus; all primary citations could simply be removed and not replaced, and the article would still not fall afoul of WP:NOTCHANGELOG. To argue otherwise would be to wikilawyer: abiding by the letter without understanding the spirit. NOTCHANGELOG was clearly intended to avoid version history articles being filled with trivia; not to impose inline citation requirements that are higher than even GA-class (currently) requires. DFlhb (talk) 22:25, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Content based on primary sources is the same whether on list or prose form. NOTCHANGELOG doesn't make a distiction either. Avilich (talk) 03:46, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Avilich And that's a severe flaw of the NOTCHANGELOG policy. It is overly vague, and that opens up the ability for it to be interpreted however editors may see fit with no regard for an article's history or the amount of effort put into it. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 07:23, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Overinterpretation as you describe it is caused when there's too much to interpret, not in a case like this when the policy is two lines long. If the policy makes no distinction between prose and lists, that simply means none should be made. Avilich (talk) 17:12, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep - Based on arguments made by Aoidh MaxnaCarta (talk) 23:40, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. WP:NOTCHANGELOG is policy and cannot by overridden by local consensus. This article fails this policy because it is only a detailed change log almost only sourced to primary sources. That it is in prose rather than table format does not change this. Sandstein 20:31, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Delete What is the point of keeping release notes. It's like keeping used tissue paper. They have no value beyond the original release. After that they are virtually useless. They have no historical value and no encyclopeadic value. They can also be recreated anywhere you want very easily, so don't need to be WP. The sources are also primary. It also fails WP:NOT, WP:SIGCOV. scope_creepTalk 21:40, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTCHANGELOG seems to consensus agreed policy as well. scope_creepTalk 21:41, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Guerillero Parlez Moi 18:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Draftify and heavily rewrite the article. The current version suffers from WP:NOTCHANGELOG and even WP:CRYSTAL in some places. The presence of several secondary sources means that there is a reason to keep some of it, although the overwhelming majority of the >700 sources are WP:PRIMARY. Draftifying would allow to salvage what is needed while cleaning up most of the article.
I am also concerned with the amount of canvassed editors which appears to artificially tilt the consensus. Something that could be done to keep the usefulness (as WP:ITSUSEFUL doesn't imply it should have a Wikipedia article) would be to have this article recreated on a more relevant wiki (maybe a browser-focused one?) rather than the general Wikipedia. Of note, most of the information can be found on https://whattrainisitnow.com/calendar/ Chaotic Enby (talk) 19:00, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For clarity, I meant that the Wikipedia article should be draftified and rewritten, but that a similar article to the current one could be hosted on a more specialized wiki. ~~ Chaotic Enby (talk) 19:02, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
i would agree with a Draftify concensus if not enough of a concensus for keep Popeter45 (talk) 19:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the article could be salvaged by simply removing the release notes from the tables (i.e. keeping the prose, and trimming the tables to just the version number and release date, removing the third column) as a better alternative than draftification, since the prose is verifiable despite not having inline secondary sources. DFlhb (talk) 19:50, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Firefox#History contains the correct level of detail on the history of Firefox; this article, even after removing the collapsed tables, is still just an unencyclopedic play-by-play that violates WP:NOTCHANGELOG. * Pppery * it has begun... 21:48, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Delete - Per WP:NOTCHANGELOG and I suspect there's some puppetry going on here. --TheInsatiableOne (talk) 08:44, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    sorry if wrong but actually feel their may be pupetry or at least carvassing for delete now as been a sudden influx of the exact same arguments in last day or so since keep won out on IOS Version History Popeter45 (talk) 16:30, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps, but NOTCHANGELOG is the foremost reason for deletion, so it's likely to be cited often. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 17:46, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    i get that but multible posts saying exact same thing shouldnt be needed and feels like a attempt at WP:VOTESTACKING Popeter45 (talk) 18:23, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOTCHANGELOG, which prohibits Exhaustive logs of software updates...Common sense must be applied with regard to the level of detail to be included. This is a list of every single release of Firefox, and for each one it lists most of the points which Firefox list in their own release notes, so it is near-exhaustive. NOTCHANGELOG also says Use reliable third-party (not self-published or official) sources in articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article. This article is almost entirely based on primary sources published by the developers of Firefox. The fact that some of the list information is presented in prose format rather than tabular format and that Firefox is a prominent piece of software doesn't change this. While it may well be possible to write an encyclopedic article about the development of Firefox over time (maybe called History of Firefox), almost all of this page would have to be discarded so there's no point in keeping it on that basis. Hut 8.5 12:00, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That the article is based on primary sources isn't important, because, as noted above, secondary sources are available. AFD is based on the availability of sources - not the current state of referencing. Nfitz (talk) 22:54, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not correct, notability is based on the existence of sources, but the rationale for deletion is not notability-based, so that's irrelevant. Hut 8.5 16:44, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree - the rational WP:NOTCHANGELOG can be fixed with a tighter edit. The list is hardly exhaustive though - for then the article would be many times the length! This is an editing issue, not a deletion issue - see WP:ATD. Nfitz (talk) 14:27, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I'm familiar with ATD, thank you. Although 75% of the content has been removed since I posted that, the page is still not even vaguely compliant with NOTCHANGELOG, and it would need a near-total rewrite to make it compliant. The page is still a list of every release of Firefox together with details of at least the most important changes in every release. The fact this is presented in text rather than tabular format doesn't automatically make it policy-compliant. Yes, it's not every single change, but it's still a wildly excessive level of detail. For example in release 109 the page lists five different features, Mozilla list eight.
The page is still almost exclusively sourced to Mozilla's release notes and announcements (WP:NOTCHANGELOG: Use reliable third-party (not self-published or official) sources in articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article, or for that matter WP:V: Base articles on reliable, independent, published sources). Fundamentally it's not an encyclopedia article. I'm sure it's possible to write an encyclopedia article about how Firefox has developed over time, but that would consist of actual prose and not a mere list of features in every release of Firefox, and it would be based on independent sources. Anyone trying to write such a thing would have to throw virtually all this content away. Hut 8.5 19:29, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • That the page needs further work is an argument to apply WP:ATD and improve it - not to delete it. Nfitz (talk) 21:38, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This "further work" would amount to rewriting the page from scratch. It is entirely acceptable to delete the page in such cases. WP:ATD says If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page. A complete rewrite is not "editing". Hut 8.5 12:08, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOTCHANGELOG. Sceptre (talk) 13:17, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as noted above, secondary sources exist. So GNG met. Nfitz (talk) 22:54, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Not all AfDs are about GNG. Something can be notable but not have an article simply because it would be outside of the purpose of an encyclopedia (a phone book, for example). In this case, the rationale for deletion is WP:NOTCHANGELOG, not WP:GNG. Chaotic Enby (talk) 20:05, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:NOTCHANGELOG would be a good reason to improve and tighten the article. The changes listed are hardly exhaustive though - for then the article would be many times the length! This is an editing issue, not a deletion issue - see WP:ATD. Nfitz (talk) 14:27, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - basically per Avilich. No objection to a separate general history article for software articles where the original article becomes over-long, but Wikipedia is an Encyclopaedia, not a directory, and not a change-log. Version history articles are explicitly change-logs however they are written. WP:NOT is becoming increasingly worn away at the edges by what amounts to pure directory/index content included only because “It’s Useful”. FOARP (talk) 05:45, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. WP:NOTCHANGELOG literally states the exact thing this article is, an exhaustive software changelog. As others have stated, a History of Firefox article would be an appropriate WP:SIZESPLIT to have off of Firefox if merited; I suspect it's not (at least at the moment). Any encyclopedic history content that's on this page but not under Firefox#History should be added there. I noticed there are a lot of keep votes focused on notability; I don't believe the notability of Firefox is in question (nor do I think anyone is suggesting individual Firefox versions would each merit independent articles), so I don't think a notability argument matters here. What's left is a bunch of people who WP:LIKEIT. I'd love to encourage anyone who came here from Reddit or similar and has a passion for this stuff to help out on encyclopedic articles! Our page on mobile browsers is still Start-class, for instance. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 15:51, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    to reply to your last section, why would people stay and help wikipedia if anything they try work on is AfD'ed on repeated tenuous arguements and refuse to consider any other opinions? Popeter45 (talk) 18:24, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not "anything they try to work on", it's just that Wikipedia has a specific purpose. The only reason the arguments are repeated is because the problem stays the same: Wikipedia is not a changelog. It's not a question of opinion, it's the literal policy. The same way it isn't a phonebook, a blogging platform, a writing archive or any of many other things. As @Dylnuge mentioned above, working on the page on mobile browsers would be a good way to help without getting AfD'ed - in fact, we would be glad to see people help on it, even if it isn't perfect! Chaotic Enby (talk) 20:10, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: This is WP:NOTCHANGELOG. CastJared (talk) 15:22, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. WP:NOT is pretty clear here, and this absolutely falls afoul of an indiscriminate directory (with copyright issues to boot.) An article on Firefox's history could be notable and exist, but that's functionally not what these version history articles are, so I don't see a benefit to a draftification. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:39, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep WP:NOTCHANGELOG is a poor policy, that holds no valid ground. Hundreds, if not thousands, of articles like these exist on the platform. Bringing up a discussion to delete these makes no sense, especially based on the article’s age and sheer amount of time these articles have existed on the platform. Losing this article would be a detrimental blow to software history, especially Firefox’s history. Therefore I am saying keep. There is no reason for this article to not exist, and WP:NOTCHANGELOG needs to be killed as a policy. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 04:18, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We can't just pick and chose the policies we like. If you want to try to kill it, go for it, but as of right now, it's still active. Unless/until NOTCHANGELOG is repealed, this isn't a valid rationale, it's just another WP:OSE stance. Sergecross73 msg me 18:32, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Sergecross73 I still believe WP:NOTCHANGELOG needs to be removed as a policy, but I have gone ahead and removed the tables (which should hopefully get rid of the potential copyright violations as mentioned by another user), and I have added a couple non-first-party sources to slightly increase the article's notability, while using Mozilla's release notes as a secondary source. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 05:31, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOT, specifically WP:NOTCHANGELOG. Wikipedia is a project about building an encyclopedia, per WP:5P1, not a data dump or an archive. An abridged version highlighting significant versions that added features that attracted coverage should be included in Firefox, but a copy pasted version of the entire Firefox release notes is not encyclopaedic content. 192.76.8.88 (talk) 20:08, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep meets GNG, make encyclopedic, do not delete but fix. Andre🚐 00:47, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This about WP:NOTCHANGELOG, WP:GNG is completely irrelevant in this discussion. 1keyhole (talk) 01:43, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    GNG is what determines whether a subject is notable. NOTCHANGELOG is a policy on the way in which articles on notable topics dealing with software updates should be written. — Bilorv (talk) 21:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There's the kitchen sink.  // Timothy :: talk  14:07, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Due to WP:NOTCHANGELOG. MrsSnoozyTurtle 08:18, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOTCHANGELOG.  // Timothy :: talk  14:06, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOTCHANGELOG. Non-canvassed, non-OTHERSTUFF 'Keep' arguments are unconvincing to me. They essentially boil down to arguing that text in the article that documents version changes in exhaustive detail is not actually a changelog for some reason. The previous AFD closed as merge, but the article was "temporarily" unmerged a week later and has stood ever since. What's the point of AFD if people can just ignore the outcome? Axem Titanium (talk) 16:48, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - This is textbook WP:NOTCHANGELOG. This is not the sort of information an encyclopedia would host, it's the type of thing one would (and does) find in the company's own change logs and update history. Just go read it there. You don't need Wikipedia for this. Sergecross73 msg me 18:27, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Per WP:NOTCHANGELOG. The place to keep track of this would be at Mozilla, done by Mozilla. On Wikipedia, it's a violation of the policy against indiscriminate databases. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 18:42, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have started an RFC over on Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not linked here, regarding the removal of the software updates policy. There is precendent for articles like these to exist, as I found one version history article that has been on the platform since 2008. This policy is actively hurting information availability, and I hope that this RFC will be considered before this discussion is closed, because this nomination is a signal that information removal from the Internet is okay. Wikipedia is not a typical encyclopedia, it is a massive database of useful information, and that information deserves to be preserved not removed. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 00:48, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or at least WP:TNT to restart fresh with a version that is based only on secondary sources. Too much of this article is sourced to the primary change log source, and knowing what I know of Firefox's updates, very few of them are captured by secondary sources in depth (at least with iOS, incremental changes are covered in sourcing). So this fails the WP:GNG from that point. Nearly all keep !votes above are the type found in WP:ATA (like "it's useful", "it's been around for a long time", etc.) --Masem (t) 01:20, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Being useful is the central purpose of this website's existence. Our articles are not written for each other, but for the hundreds of millions of readers who sustain our existence. jp×g 06:50, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP's central purpose is an educational resource above all. There are some things directly useful to that (like the periodic table) but things that are useful may not have a clear education purpose. Or if there is that purpose, it should be filtered through the eyes of third party or secondary sources and not interpreted against OR by WP editors. Masem (t) 12:28, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Aoidh mentions that a good portion of the article is in prose, but I disagree. WP:NOTCHANGELOG doesn't mention a format that the changelog is in, and I would argue that it's good that it doesn't. A changelog can be written in prose. A changelog can be written as a poem. It's still a changelog, and it takes the form of Firefox x was released on date. (changelog text). Mozilla has better release notes than we do, so there is a viable alternative to those who said this article is useful. It's also worth contrasting this kind of page from iOS version history. They may both have the same title, but they are markedly different. The iOS page has a one-paragraph overview of each article, which have an encyclopedic tone to them. That page could do with more citations, but it treats each OS as a distinct thing, not changes between the previous one. SWinxy (talk) 01:45, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - A pretty clear cut case of WP:NOTCHANGELOG. Not liking that policy or asserting that the article in its current form is useful does not change the fact that it is a violation of a Wikipedia policy. Rorshacma (talk) 02:02, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    a violation of a policy that shouldn't even exist.
    this page existed for over a decade. deleting this page now will kill a significant part of internet history. information should be preserved not erased / deleted. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 03:04, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, then, its a good thing the actual version history of Firefox is fully preserved on the official Mozilla pages that make up about 700 of the citations. Rorshacma (talk) 04:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have just removed all tables from the article in favor of purely prose - this article should no longer run afoul of WP:NOTCHANGELOG, as the article now only summarises Firefox's version history and the major changes made in each version. Efforts will have to be made to further cleanup the article, but the changes so far should void the need to delete the article entirely off the platform on guideline grounds. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 05:05, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The policies were made for Wikipedia, not Wikipedia for the policies. Many people have quoted WP:NOTCHANGELOG, and WP:ITSUSEFUL, and WP:ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP, but nobody has explained why, or to what extent applying this specific interpretation of policy to this article would benefit the project in any way. "I would like the page to be deleted" is not a benefit. Reading policy pages in their entirety sheds some light on the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to provide accurate, verifiable, neutral, and well-written content that informs readers. Does this article do this? Yes. Wikipedia is not a creative writing project, or a MFA program; articles do not need to be interesting or fun or use clever turns of phrase. They need to receive significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Has the version history of the Firefox web browser received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject? The sourcing here indicates that it has. There are refs to The Verge, ExtremeTech, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, Wired, ZDNet, Engadget, CNET, VentureBeat, and ghacks. These are real factors to consider; the article being boring is not. The article doesn't even have a bunch of huge tables in it; it consists, as of writing, almost entirely of prose. It is perverse that "the article is useful" is a rationale to delete it: should we only aspire to write useless articles? jp×g 06:50, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a pretty savage strawman of both NOTCHANGELOG and ITSUSEFUL. nobody has explained why [...] Plenty of people have explained why NOTCHANGELOG applies---the article is manifestly an exhaustive log of differences between software updates. It was when it was full of tables and it still is in the form of just prose, prose which still documents software differences in exhaustive detail. It is perverse that "the article is useful" is a rationale to delete it: should we only aspire to write useless articles? This is such a gobsmacking misunderstanding of ITSUSEFUL that it must be willful. ITSUSEFUL, as an argument-to-avoid, is deployed in response to people who argue to keep on account of an article's usefulness. No one is saying that articles must be useless. That's a wild strawman. People are saying that articles should not be kept solely on account of their usefulness, because usefulness is subjective and many useful things are not appropriate encyclopedia topics (like lists of everyone's telephone numbers, among other examples listed at WP:ITSUSEFUL). Casting the entire 'delete' side as WP:IDONTLIKEIT (as you did with a piped-link for I would like the page to be deleted) is a shockingly bad faith reading of other people's arguments on this page. Axem Titanium (talk) 07:22, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies if I have been a bit of a prick here; I suppose we are all getting our gobs smacked tonight. However: being useful and informative to readers is the sole purpose of Wikipedia; why else does the hosting bill get paid? It is true that an article being useful despite pervasive and irreparable faults, like being unverifiable, or lacking notability, or having baked-in ideological slant, is not a reason to keep it. For example, a literal list of everyone's phone number who lived in a city would be intrusive, unmaintainable, unverifiable, and a massive liability. An article about "Why George Bush is a dick" would be impossible to write neutrally, and so on. But if an article does not have these faults, and it meets our content guidelines, it makes no sense to me that its being useful wouldn't be an argument in favor of it -- and it seems unreasonable that editors' arguments should be discounted on the basis of bringing up such an obvious factor. Second of all, I don't think that everyone is merely saying they don't like it; I am saying that this is what determining whether the "common sense" provisions of WP:NOTCHANGELOG apply boils down to. What exactly does it mean for something to be "exhaustive"? I wrote an exhaustive article once, about a subject which definitely nobody cares about (you can ask my friends who had to listen to me talk about it), and it was made a FA; there are 951 articles in Category:Moths of Madagascar. I would say that what this "common sense" provision entails is that it's not the case that we somehow value being "exhaustive" for islands and months, but hate being "exhaustive" about Web browsers. jp×g 07:54, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I think it's a weakness in the language as written at NOTCHANGELOG, but that's neither here nor there. It's the only instance of the phrase "common sense" on the entire page, and I think WP:NOCOMMON applies in far more instances than people would expect. That being said, the fact of the matter is that there's no policy called NOMOTHSOFMADAGASCAR (or less facetiously, NOT-SPECIES-TAXONOMY) but there is one called NOTCHANGELOG. Sitewide consensus has decided that exhaustive documentation of species is appropriate for Wikipedia (implicitly, given a lack of this policy), but exhaustive documentation of software releases is not (explicitly). Arguing for a new policy called NOT-SPECIES-TAXONOMY or for repealing NOTCHANGELOG is above the pay grade of this AFD. Axem Titanium (talk) 08:22, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Might be savage, or it might not be. Why does it matter? These policies do not reflect the views and opinions of newer Wikipedia editors, and even some older ones. These policies are relics of baby Wikipedia when it was a young encyclopedic platform. However now it has evolved into a treasure trove of useful information. I agree with most Wikipedia policies, but if many people find something useful, doesn't that defeat your whole argument of how "usefulness is subjective", if the vast majority of people find something useful or valuable? Also it should be noted that the vast majority of people who read Wikipedia don't edit Wikipedia themselves, so there's no way to accurately judge usefulness to begin with. That's another policy that needs to be looked at, but thats a topic for another day. And to a lot of people, articles like these have value and importance. They shouldn't just be sent to the dumpster as if they're worthless. The Internet is an immensely valuable information resource. Wikipedia contributes dramatically to this. Outright ignoring "its useful" comments is unacceptable, in my opinion, especially if the vast majority of people find something useful. There is no way to ever change Wikipedia policies if most people who edit Wikipedia are older editors who are firmly planted in their ways of "this is the best way and no other way works at all." Wikipedia is not purely an encyclopedia anymore, if it was, articles like List of AMD Ryzen processors, or List of Intel Core i7 processors wouldn't exist. Hell, there's even an entire article dedicated to crayon colors. Most people find immense value and importance in articles like these. These whole discussions scream "very vocal minority" because the vast majority of the 100,000+ active Wikipedia editors won't ever discover conversations like these, and the people who do, are typically older Wikipedia editors who are, like I mentioned, used to the way things work now. I barely ever see Wikipedia policies change, and I can very much guarantee that these strict guidelines are preventing people from deciding to invest some time into making Wikipedia better. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 08:16, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Strawmen are logical fallacies that weaken your argument and you should not suffer your side to make them. These policies do not reflect the views and opinions of newer Wikipedia editors, and even some older ones.[citation needed] Just as you can make any assertions you want without evidence, so can I. "The vast majority of people like rhubarb pie and hate version history articles. In fact, 95% of them voted to erase them from existence in the 1917 presidential election of Venezuela." See how easy it is to support any argument you want if you can just make stuff up? Wikipedia policy is built on consensus, forged by logic, discussion, and evidence, not fabulism. Axem Titanium (talk) 08:35, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll slightly modify JPXG's argument. People are name-dropping a policy, but failing to apply it with common sense. The tables are now fully gone, so my arguments above become all the more relevant. In any other topic area, it would be considered invalid to AfD an article that's clearly notable (as many !delete voters admit), simply because it lacks inline citations. Those votes would be discarded outright under WP:NOTCLEANUP. Why are we treating software version material differently from everything else on Wikipedia? WP:NOTCHANGELOG does not require everything to have an inline secondary citation; that's what GA-class requires, and any policy that's interpreted as requiring articles to meet the GA criteria, is a policy that is being totally misread. NOTCHANGELOG requires stuff to be verifiable to secondary sources, not verified, as it doesn't override WP:V, and the verifiable vs verified debate has been litigated countless times and settled. These interpretations of NOTCHANGELOG also fundamentally argue "it's too detailed! too much trivia", but again that wouldn't be a valid AfD vote in any other topic area. That gets improved through editing.
A lot of the delete votes are just WP:VAGUEWAVE, WP:NOIMPROVEMENT, and WP:UNRS, with almost no one asking themselves "what's most likely to result in a good article, long-term"? "The people who actually work on computing articles say it can be improved, so why don't we let normal editing processes take place, rather than force them to start over from scratch?". Also, the fact that canvassing happened made the !keep side look significantly less credible and I think incentivized !delete votes. DFlhb (talk) 08:32, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think you and I disagree on what constitutes a changelog. You believe that by removing the tables, the problem is solved because the changelog is gone. I believe that prose that primarily describes the version-to-version differences of software in exhaustive detail is still a changelog. Please note that the specific text of NOTCHANGELOG is: Wikipedia articles should not be: Exhaustive logs of software updates. The text that follows (Use reliable third-party (not self-published or official) sources in articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article. Common sense must be applied with regard to the level of detail to be included.) is explanatory advice, analogous to the non-bolded text in the other elements of the NOTDB list. It is not the actual thing that is disallowed by the policy. The thing that is disallowed by the policy is exhaustive logs of software updates, full stop, regardless of the amount of third-party sources. By analogy, the other things disallowed are "Summary-only descriptions of works", "Lyrics databases", and "Excessive listings of unexplained statistics", full stop, regardless of the amount of third-party sources. No amount of third-party sourcing will let us dump the full lyrical text of Psalms because the policy states that a lyrics database constitutes "an indiscriminate collection of information", and so is an "exhaustive log of software updates". Axem Titanium (talk) 08:55, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No; my point is that in no other topic area do we delete articles just because they contain undue detail. That gets fixed through editing. The prose contains due and undue details, like most of our articles, and that's not a valid reason for deletion. NOTCHANGELOG is somewhat poorly worded on this. (And despite what Joelle says, changelogs are not "promotional"; they're written by engineers, at least at Mozilla; so NPOV isn't a cause for deletion either). DFlhb (talk) 09:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Again, it's not the dueness or undueness of the detail that I have a problem with, it is the intrinsic feature of describing the differences between software version 3.11.17 and 3.11.18 that makes it a changelog, which is a type of indiscriminate database. I agree that NOTCHANGELOG is not optimally worded in its explanatory text, but it is still clear that changelogs in and of themselves are the offending thing, not the level of detail of them. Axem Titanium (talk) 09:23, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, 3.11.17 and 3.11.18 are undue. So are many other things. But again, a lot of the material is due. Remove the undue stuff, and you no longer have an "exhaustive changelog". We can't delete an article just because !delete voters are unwilling to improve it. If you think the problem is the whole article, rather than just the undue detail, please read this discussion where NOTCHANGELOG's current wording was reached. Wholesale deletion of these articles was never the point. People there treated Android version history as somewhat excessively detailed, but fixable (fixable!). Guess what it looked like at the time? This. And it did get fixed, and now it's much better. DFlhb (talk) 09:34, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you think originalism is going to be convincing to me, then boy howdy are you barking up the wrong tree. The text of the policy is how it's actually being deployed in practice, in this and other discussions. If that's not how the founding fathers intended it, then they should have written it better. The venue for that is a constitutional amendment (RFC), which must be ratified by a 3/4 supermajority of states (Wikipedia consensus). Axem Titanium (talk) 09:51, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can we not apply U.S. government behavior to how Wikipedia policies are discussed? U.S. government behavior is not a staple of how things should work. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 09:58, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's called "past consensus", not originalism. Emphasizing the spirit, not the text, is how Wikipedia works. And if we go by "how it's actually being deployed", then look at the entire past decade, where AfDs found that NOTCHANGELOG didn't mandate deletion. But we're going down an argument that's not remotely relevant, valid, or even appropriate in AfDs, so I'll bow out now. DFlhb (talk) 10:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that this, as well as the complete rewrite of the article to replace the tables with prose text, may warrant a ping of previous participants. Note to closer: at the time of nomination, the article consisted mostly of gigantic tables, and many !votes prior to then were based on this. jp×g 10:20, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Even after the changes to the article, my position to Delete remains unchanged. Instead of the changelog being in exhaustive tables, it's veiled under prose. We can't paint over the cracks and say the problem is solved. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 10:44, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@TheInsatiableOne: This is a very wrong take. There is no reason to delete an article. There are other solutions, such as draftifying, that can solve this problem without outright deleting an article. And the tables covered the changes to Firefox a lot more indepth - the paragraphs only mention the *major* changes, not the bug fixes or anything anymore unlike what the old tables did. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 10:50, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Draftifying an article implies that an article is flawed but can be fixed, but this is not the case. And I am aware that the paragraphs only cover major changes, that still constitutes a changelog and therefore is against policy. No matter how the article is formatted and reworked the core problem remains the same. Why does it even need to be on Wikipedia? Are Mozilla's own logs not sufficient? TheInsatiableOne (talk) 11:05, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@TheInsatiableOne Except its not against policy. Check the link I posted re: Archive 45. Version history articles can exist, and the policy was explicitly changed to allow Android version history and other articles similar to it to exist. Therefore, this article can be fixed. This NOTCHANGELOG policy needs to stop being so badly misinterpreted. It genuinely shows just how flawed and vague that whole policy is. A single sentence detailing a Wikipedia policy that doesn't go into enough detail opens the doors wide open for said policy to be wildly misinterpreted. And to answer your question, NO, they are not sufficient. They can be removed from Mozilla's pages at anytime if Mozilla were to ever decide to do a full on revamp of their website and remove old release notes from the Firefox website. It is ALWAYS good to have a secondary source of this information and to get additional sources. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 11:08, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I would want those articles to see an AfD discussion but that's a tangent. Perhaps NOTCHANGELOG should be expanded upon, but again, tangent. As for here and now, going by the letter of what is said, it's still problematic because of the use of primary sources, and the article nonetheless seems to fall foul of "indiscriminate collection of information". And I must reiterate, why must Wikipedia host this, when Mozilla has a changelog page as well? TheInsatiableOne (talk) 11:17, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I already answered your question with my edit to my comment. And there is no reason to open an AfD for the Android version history, it is already an article that has been heavily debated in the past. Leave it alone. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 11:23, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Your answer to the point of Mozilla hosting their own logs is essentially ITSUSEFUL. I've yet to see any good reason for keeping these changelogs, it all seems to amount to some people finding it interesting. Wikipedia doesn't exist to hoard data for it's own sake. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 11:38, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@1keyhole, @Axem Titanium, @DFlhb, @Masem, @Sceptre, @Hut 8.5, @Nfitz, @Chaotic Enby, @Pppery, @CastJared, @David Fuchs, @Sergecross73, @Dylnuge, @MrsSnoozyTurtle, @TimothyBlue: I am paging all, or at least most, participants since the discussion was re-listed to read this archived discussion, and to reconsider their stance on this. And I am additionally requesting some additional time before this discussion is closed to gather more feedback w the article's recent changes. The sources need to be updated to be less reliant on Mozilla's first party site, and the paragraphs need to be less copy-pastey, but based on Archive 45's discussion, the ban on tables & version history articles was outright removed. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 10:38, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: the article rewrite is fairly self-evident as to what it is, but to concisely be clear on what's been linked to at the WT:NOT -- the actual section that constitutes WP:NOTCHANGELOG was added in February 2011 without discussion, and later subjected to an informal RfC (the one at the link) which found consensus for its current version. Said discussion was specifically started about modifying the policy's wording such that the article Android version history would not be in violation of it (all of which suggestions were agreed on unanimously); there was no suggestion that it should be construed as forbidding all pages about version history. jp×g 10:44, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a couple people have brought up that not all participants were pinged in the above comment... let's see if I can write some JavaScript to harvest all the usernames that have left signatures here. It turns out I can. I believe there is a limit to how many users can be pinged in one edit, so I will need to split up these 67 names. @1keyhole, BilledMammal, Elemimele, GA-RT-22, Moongrimer, Popeter45, Qxyz123, ShockingOutcome, SnickeringBear, 147.147.154.61, 2A00:23EE:17C0:2F78:58CC:B76:4D26:29CA, Skotishsky, 192.76.8.88, Bb010g, Dylnuge, Evelyn Marie, JoelleJay, Klausness, LinuxPower, Locke Cole, Yoasif, Andrevan, Aoidh, Avilich, Axem Titanium, Bilorv, Cakelot1, CastJared, Chaotic Enby, and Chris Ssk: jp×g 23:52, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Daemonspudguy, David Fuchs, DFlhb, EH86055, Félix An, FOARP, Guerillero, Hey man im josh, Hut 8.5, JPxG, Lightburst, Mardus, Masem, MaxnaCarta, MrsSnoozyTurtle, Nfitz, Nosferattus, Old Naval Rooftops, PaulGamerBoy360, Pikamander2, Pppery, QuicoleJR, Rorshacma, Sandstein, Sceptre, Scope creep, Sergecross73, Shellwood, Skynxnex, Swinxy, Tengwar, The Fiddly Leprechaun, TheInsatiableOne, TimothyBlue, WhatamIdoing, Zxcvbnm, and ResonantDistortion: jp×g 23:54, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Was it really necessary to do that? My position to delete remains unchanged, and it looks like everyone is firmly entrenched in their respective position. It would be best if we could get a closing admin on this and prevent it being dragged out any longer. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 10:32, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why I'm being repeatedly pinged here. I've left another comment saying that I still support deleting the page even after some of it was removed. This archived discussion apparently did not lead to any change in the policy, and can't be said to reflect consensus. Hut 8.5 12:10, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't ping me PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like there were some more I missed: @TimothyBlue, WhatamIdoing, Zxcvbnm, ResonantDistortion, JPxG, CastJared, 1keyhole, Evelyn Marie, Masem, Dylnuge, MrsSnoozyTurtle, Chaotic Enby, Axem Titanium, Nfitz, Pppery, Serial Number 54129, FOARP, User1042, Jauerback, Popeter45, Bilorv, and Ivanvector: jp×g 00:07, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, but this article will Keep or Delete? CastJared (talk) 10:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest it will Delete. CastJared (talk) 16:35, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly opposed to more time. This discussion has dragged on long for a time.
I think both sides have made their arguments for keeping or deleting this article, as we have all clearly had a very long debate over this subject. 1keyhole (talk) 11:22, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion is proving very divisive. Nobody will come to a consensus, and its constant bickering amongst one another. This entire AfD process is IMHO a joke - the vast majority of these discussions always tend to draw in the most negative editors, and this has happened many times in the past with AfDs. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 11:25, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Part of the problem is that there's signs of MEATPUPPET-ry going on - someone made a call to a reddit board about this and other change log lists being deleted, creating a rallying cry to keep the article. Now, this would be fine if they actually brought useful information and improvements - I've actually been at the center of such a case with the Old Man Murray article, which was saved by a number of new content articles that I incorporated when the fate of that article was made a topic by a few websites. But here, its a cry of "but its a useful list!" without supporting any policy-based arguments. That doesn't help make the distinction if NOTCHANGELOG is a bad policy or not. Masem (t) 12:31, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Second this. These kinds of discussions do not magically coalesce in consensus when allowed to continue indefinitely. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 16:05, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Evelyn Marie. The discussion re-listing reason from 25 April doesn't say that it was "to read this archived discussion", instead it seems to be just a typical re-list where the admin feels that consensus has not yet emerged.
Regarding the request in your ping, the recent changes do not alter my opinion that this is a case of WP:NOTCHANGELOG. Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 11:58, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Both sides of this topic are unusually polarized, and end up talking over each other's basic premises. WP:NOTCHANGELOG shouldn't ban every information about Firefox's history (which itself is notable and verifiable by third-party sources), but listing every minute software update is tedious and impractical, be it in table form or (as it is now) in prose form.
The article should be rewritten and improved to a larger extant than a cosmetic "table to text" change, but deleting it is the lazy solution, losing important encyclopedic content. Deleting all of Wikipedia for not being perfect is just as absurd as making it a complete sandbox. Draftifying is the way to go, in order to bring forth a higher quality, encyclopedic and still useful article. Chaotic Enby (talk) 14:14, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion is unchanged. I still support deletion and I agree with FOARP that selective pinging and other canvassing behavior should cease. Trying to throw around as much FUD as possible between this page, the pings, and the RFC at WP:NOT is not productive and seems to be done with the purpose of drawing out a 'no consensus' result by sheer exhaustion. Axem Titanium (talk) 14:35, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely agree that this discussion is getting drawn out way more than it should (and has been since the Reddit canvassing). The arguments are still the same, the people are more and more entrenched in their ideas, and meanwhile, the actual changes that could help the article work (not just rewriting tables as text) are still yet to be seen. Chaotic Enby (talk) 17:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Reading the archive makes me more convinced that NOTCHANGELOG is a good reason to edit and tighten the article - not to delete it. More than anything, this seems to be a content dispute - and the AFD violates WP:ATD-E which notes that Disagreement over a policy or guideline is not dealt with by deleting it.. Nfitz (talk) 14:32, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion is unchanged on both fronts - the fact that the aforementioned section of the policy has existed for 10 years is stronger evidence than trying to micro-analyze a 2013 discussion, and it is still the case that Firefox#History contains the correct level of detail on the history of Firefox; this article, even after removing the collapsed tables, is still just an unencyclopedic play-by-play. Finally These policies do not reflect the views and opinions of newer Wikipedia editors, and even some older ones -> I joined Wikipedia in 2016, long after the aforementioned policies were written, and stand by their merits, so this isn't just oldbies trying to hold newer editors hostage. * Pppery * it has begun... 14:49, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I joined Wikipedia last year, and I agree with these policies too. The fact that they're old doesn't necessarily mean only older Wikipedians support them, or that anyone is trying to gatekeep policies - to the contrary, they are able to stand the test of time (and to withstand multiple RfCs, like the currently ongoing one). Chaotic Enby (talk) 17:04, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Disagreement over a policy or guideline is not dealt with by deleting it" refers to not deleting policies themselves, it says nothing about articles breaking these policies. Plus, the amount of changes needed to make the article comply means draftifying should at least be on the table - which is a perfectly sensible option for such a massive content dispute. Chaotic Enby (talk) 17:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTCHANGELOG was specifically written for the purpose of preserving these articles and limiting their size, not to excise them completely, as was the unanimous consensus when it was written (and indeed what the policy itself says). jp×g 23:35, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I was not pinged. Pinging some, but not all, of the !voters puts us at risk of canvassing allegations. At any rate, simply changing tables to prose does not change my !vote. This is still a changelog. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a changelog. We do not include exhaustive lists of changes, we summarise what is said about notable subjects based on secondary sources. No objection to having a general history article about Firefox if suitable sourcing for it can be found. FOARP (talk) 13:45, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Changing tables to prose makes the article worse in my mind. It should be a mixture of prose and tables. The issue, as far as I can see, it too much detail. And having so much prose about too many details makes the article unusable. Do we really need trivialities such as improved responsiveness on macOS during periods of high CPU load by switching to a modern lock? However, something like Firefox 12 is the final release to support Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM & SP1 is useful, and likely well reported. But these are content issues - not AFD issue. Nfitz (talk) 15:23, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As presently written this is a changelog. The Keep !votes are arguing extensively for it to be kept as such, not re-written. Re-writing as a general history (assuming sourcing exists) would require WP:TNT at this point anyway - there is no version in the edit-history that is not a changelog. WP:NOT is most definitely a DELREASON, justifiable by preventing Wikipedia being used as a dumping ground for non-notable, non-encyclopaedic information about commercial products that should pay to host their own information-spaces. FOARP (talk) 03:34, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - per most of WP:NOT, but specifically WP:NOTCHANGELOG. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 18:29, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    you may want to check Article 45 of WP:NOT as that endosed allowing such pages to exist Popeter45 (talk) 19:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Then it still invoke INDISCRIMINATE, as "data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources" which the article fails to do. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 10:45, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. That Firefox 37 started using HTTPS for Bing (sourced only to Mozilla) is excessive detail for a general-purpose encyclopedia. However, enough detail to justify a standalone article is appropriate for the version history of a browser that peaked at 32% market share and has 3–6% market share today. Buried under a pile of Mozilla primary sources are Ars Technica, CNET, TechCrunch etc. sources that offer the starting point for a better article on this notable topic. — Bilorv (talk) 21:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I added all those sources just days ago, to prove a point (not WP:POINT!) that the prose is a good starting point, and that much of it is verifiable to secondary sources (despite what some argued here). Wasn't even hard. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to notice. We don't delete entire articles just because they contain WP:PROSELINE or excessive detail; that can be improved without much effort, as I've hopefully shown. DFlhb (talk) 00:07, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I don't know if anyone actually looked at WP:NOTCHANGELOG beyond the title of the shortcut, but it does not say "delete all changelogs". It instructs to use reliable sources in compiling changelogs rather than official sources, and to use common sense. Besides the arguments about preserving information about one of the leading web browsers, this list is useful to checkusers (I can't get into why per WP:BEANS). I came here after seeing that the Chrome version history, which I consulted regularly for sockpuppet investigations, was deleted, and am basically making the same argument here as in that article's deletion review. WP:IAR is also a policy, which says to ignore rules that prevent maintenance or improvement of Wikipedia, which is exactly how NOTCHANGELOG is being invoked here. The arguments to delete are just that the policy exists, not that enforcing it will improve anything at all. This is a clear case where IAR applies. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 22:46, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "The article is useful to checkusers because it is a magnet for certain LTAs". So wouldn't deleting the article mean one less target for disruptive editors? Don't we want to reduce editing by LTAs? JoelleJay (talk) 02:58, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't misquote me; that wasn't what I wrote and not at all what I meant. The information on the page is useful: checkuser data reveals the software version of the browser used to make an edit, and knowing when that specific version was released can be useful when comparing accounts. It's a weak indicator but still can be useful. As far as I know this page hasn't been a frequent target for vandalism, which would be neither a reason to keep nor to delete. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 11:33, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Or to put it a slightly different way: deleting this page makes abuse mitigation marginally more difficult, a tiny bit more difficult, but since it won't improve anything at all even slightly, deletion is net negative and IAR says not to do that. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Keep" - Same reason as before. Daemonspudguy (talk) 00:06, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    NB: This is a reaffirmation of a previous comment in response to the ping. Axem Titanium (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have a simple question: Can some please summarize in one or two sentences why we should delete this page (except from WP:NOCHANGELOG, where I agree that WP:IAR still is a rule)? Because in the little time I took to read over this since I was here the last time (yes, I know it's weeks ago), I only find that one policy, and the argument of not enough interesting content. Yes, a version history isn't as exciting as an article about a singer or a country, but that doesn't mean that people don't want to know about it, and Wikipedia is still a top source for information. If you go by that, there are thousands of tiny articles that could be deleted too, and somehow nobody does that. Besides that: how much time and energy of how many people (myself included) went into this discussion that could have been used to get that article even better (thanks to everyone who worked on it instead of debating here)? Is this whole discussion really necessary? I personally think it is not. My opinion stays: Keep the article, get it better and get to other topics. Wikipedia isn't just this one article that needs work, there are thousands out there that are in way worse shape than this and we really should work on that, before we start having a discussion if WP:IAR or WP:NOCHANGELOG is more important (IAR is going to win). It's senseless. So, and now I'm going to follow my own advice and stop writing, and do something else. Qxyz123 (talk) 02:08, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Because it is not encyclopedic content and goes directly against the five pillars of Wikipedia the section that states, "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" 1keyhole (talk) 02:59, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    But is it indiscriminate? A lot of changes aren't even mentioned. With more tightening it could be a very discriminate collection of information. Sounds like an argument to improve the article (which does need doing), rather than deleting it. Nfitz (talk) 03:21, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It does not go against anything. If you read the link to the actual discussion that WP:NOTCHANGELOG is a record of, they were literally trying to create a policy that allowed Android version history to keep existing. In 2015, further discussion established that the purpose of the section was to reduce the length of version history articles (this time for IOS version history). Nowhere in these archives is there anything resembling a consensus that "all version history articles should be deleted". If the article sucks, fine: AfD is not cleanup, and someone can fix it. Deleting this article permanently prevents this from happening, under G4. jp×g 03:57, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "Why prohibit hosting all the words in public-domain songs or books?" "Why can't I use Wikipedia to find the plasmid map for my donor vector?" "Why don't we have a list of every business for every town?" "Why doesn't Wikipedia have a built-in BLAST interface for me to use?" "Why isn't there a Wikipedia article for every word?" "Why isn't there a how-to guide on here for fixing the thermocycler?" "Why can't I learn every published detail on every Survivor contestant or Indian soap opera episode here?" "Why do I have to go to a different website for anything?" JoelleJay (talk) 03:19, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikiversity indeed exist because providing this information is in the public interest (indeed, Wiktionary has articles on bizarre slang words like wikt:newfriend and wikt:malding). jp×g 03:57, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One would note that none of those sister projects are Wikipedia. Axem Titanium (talk) 04:57, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One would also note that Joelle implies that the page we're currently discussing, in its current state, is a verbatim copy/paste of every release note released by Mozilla. Which is not true. A common point among !delete votes.
The article should be completely reorganized so its main section headers follow topics, not arbitrarily-grouped version numbers; i.e. "Security", "Web compatibility", "Privacy", "Update delivery", etc. We already have a "CPU architectures" and "Release compatibility" sections, which are a step in that direction. The article should also be moved to "History of Firefox", as should every version history article. It should also be trimmed of proseline, cruft and excessive detail, so it gives a proper high-level overview. None of those are arguments for deletion. DFlhb (talk) 09:30, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The article should be removed, the problem of "indiscriminate information" and primary sources still exists, and no amount of reworking is going to solve that. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 10:35, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A baffling statement. I explain what I mean by "reworking" (trim indiscriminate info, add secondary citations, recontextualize & give a broader overview), and you assert that the article would still rely on primary sources and have indiscriminate info after a rework took care of it. DFlhb (talk) 11:06, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The article inherently relies on primary sources, as Mozilla is the source of the changelogs which the article is based on. The only possible recourse is to TNT and recreate as a "history of Firefox" but even that is tenuous. In its current form, the article is by nature problematic, and is likely to attract further negative attention in the future. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 11:14, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've demonstrated that this can be done, by "reworking" the first two paragraphs of the article. I'm grateful not to have had to do that from scratch. You assert, below, that the existence of secondary sources covering Firefox history is "hypothetical". That is untrue; it's received wide, properly-contextualised secondary coverage. You may also wish to read WP:STUBIFY. DFlhb (talk) 11:21, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
All the more reason to TNT and recreate. The article in its current form has a major issue of INDISCRIMINATE. A history of Firefox article with good secondary sources is a possibility, but this article in its current form shouldn't be kept. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 11:38, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you volunteering to re-create it? As I said before, it would be far easier to improve the current version than to recreate from scratch. There's a reason WP:NOTCLEANUP exists, I'm not merely namedropping it because I feel like it — DFlhb (talk) 19:08, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment it's getting difficult to process this AfD. Let's think about our readers. There are two sorts of people who might want to know about the history of Firefox: There are the technical people, those who need specific information about which updates came out when, and what they covered. And there are the generally curious, the people who just want an overview of how Firefox developed, but who don't want to digest the entire primary sources. The former group need a detailed database of changes; the latter need an overview. We are an encyclopaedia, so our role is to cater for the latter. Take railway accidents as an example; the UK has a wonderful database of railway accidents at the accident archives, which provides a primary source for those in need of full technical details[6]. But we have a list of selected, notable accidents at List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom, where we give a condensed view to the reader who can't digest the whole primary literature. I agree that a full change-list of Firefox should exist somewhere, just not here. Having it here is a wasted opportunity, because it occupies the space where a general reader should have found a condensed form, preventing us from having a properly sourced, selected history. Further, we have a golden touchstone of notability: that someone, other than those immediately involved, should have felt motivated to write about the subject. I really don't feel comfortable abandoning that touchstone.

There is never going to be any agreement on this. But we can't let the whole Wikipedia project change its raison d'etre to satisfy one pressure-group's requirement for a place to host a database. Elemimele (talk) 09:26, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a database though. It is a version history of Firefox's major versions. The prose needs to be rewritten to not be such a reptitive mess, but the article genuinely, in my mind, doesn't need deletion, but rather improvement. And if its deleted, someone will just more than likely reinstate it anyways. Articles like these have value. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 10:29, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But it still falls foul of INDISCRIMINATE, in that "data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources" which the article certainly doesn't do, and would be an inherent problem no matter how much editing and rewording is done. TheInsatiableOne (talk) 10:42, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@TheInsatiableOne This is a problem that could've been avoided if the original creator of the article didn't entirely rely on Mozilla's release notes for sourcing. Sources can be fixed and improved and replaced, therefore your argument is null and void. - Evelyn Marie (leave a message · contributions) 10:45, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment, were it not for Mozilla's releasing their update information under a cc- license, much of this would have risked speedy deletion as a copy-vio. There are significant chunks that are word-perfect identical to Mozilla's text. But even without the copy-vio, you have to ask yourself whether it's necessary to mirror verbatim, and without any editorial input, information that's available elsewhere? Elemimele (talk) 10:52, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So the supposition of a perfect source which doesn't cause issues with INDISCRIMINATE and use of primary sources, which the original creator didn't use (somehow). This hypothetical counters my argument. Am I reading this right? TheInsatiableOne (talk) 11:01, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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