Wikipedia:Perl Mediation/Archive

Intro

Hi. I'm the mediator taking Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-05-23 Perl. A little background on neutrality.

I've known been programming for about 26 years and professionally involved in the computer field (though not as a developer) for about 13 years.
I know Perl and have used it over the last 10 years for a variety of projects.
I've noticed Randal is participating on one issue. I should disclose that I did try and hire Randal's company about 7 years ago and was unsuccessful (he was focussed on training and I needed a custom module written). So we have had minor business dealings, OTOH he doesn't seem to be a major participant.
I know a wide variety of other languages and I'd say my favorite right now is Haskell.
By in large I favor Python for enterprise use and Perl for personal use

So I hope that is neutral enough. Now.... I started this page because the mediation page had turned into a mess very quickly, as is the talk page. I want to keep this page reasonably clean and to the point. So the first rule we have is no discussion of personal bias. Wikipedia editors are by and large motivated by passion to write, since they are unpaid. At the same time we attempt institutionally to be dispassionate the way we do this is via. WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV. I am perfectly OK with why a particular passage is biased I don't want to hear about how an editor is biased.

So now lets address 2 subtopics. Please jump in below jbolden1517^Talk 15:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

The fall in popularity of Perl

This seems to be one of the key issues under debate. Basically has Perl fallen off in terms of popularity as measured by usage, webhits, book sales...? Now what I'd like to determine is (and you all should answer these questions):

Am I accurately describing the debate?
Now do the facts point to which of the following two statements: For example Cobol is obviously a language in tremendous decline but it is still heavily used, while Java is a language which is increasing usage much more slowly than it was 5 years ago.
1. Perl's usage is falling off
2. The increase in Perl's usage has fallen off
Does this deserve a paragraph a section or a subsection?

jbolden1517^Talk 15:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you're accurately describing the debate. My issues are with verifiability, not the particular issue at hand. We have no way to measure the statement, and any single measure is certainly to leave out something. Additionally, different measures will show opposite conclusions. This clearly shows that we can't verify the conclusion. There are no facts to support any statement about Perl's popularity either way, so the submissions so far do not meet Wikipedia's standards. I don't think that the popularity of anything, Perl included, is encyclopedic. It certainly doesn't change the identity or characteristic of the subject. Should we add a section on popularity of the topic to every page and let people express loosely evidenced opinions on current books, music, political philosphies? Scarpia 17:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Benchmarking

Benchmarking any language is very complicated. However discussions about problems with benchmarking that are not specific to Perl belong in Benchmark (computing) not in a Perl article. Obviously we need to include some benchmarks for Perl and some discussion of how to benchmark Perl. Perl has been optimized far more than most "interpreted" languages, it has been studied on this issue for decade or more. So what I want is a strategy for addressing this issue. I'd like the participants in the benchmarking debate to propose one. jbolden1517^Talk 15:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)