Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of the C programming language

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to C programming language. Edit history preserved for potential to merge this content - but I make no recommendations as to whether it should or should not be merged. While there is no clear consensus to either keep, delete, redirect or merge, there does appear to be a consensus that this information is not well suited to a standalone article and I have selected the best compromise to this end. Shereth 19:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism of the C programming language

Scantily referenced POV fork of the article on the C programming language. Relevant policy here is Wikipedia:Criticism#Separate articles devoted to criticism, trivia or reception (history) Vquex (talk) 23:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete delete delete. The talk page shows it for what it is: a collaborative essay on the subject, rather than an encyclopedia-worthy article. Scantly-sourced and never likely to get much better, just like all the other criticism articles. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:43, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Very straightforward violation of the cited guideline. tgies (talk) 23:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete; it's clearly not an encyclopedia article. ~Double AW^[c] 00:46, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- Plvekamp (talk) 00:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This is not a quality encyclopaedic article. Secondly, it seems to have been nominated for deletion before under another name; only its creator created a new article with a new title here Artene50 (talk) 02:39, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or merge: most criticism does not deserve it's own article. Try merging it with C programming language instead. Alexius08 is welcome to talk about his contributions. 04:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge back in truncated form. There is useful information there. Deletion would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. --- GWO (talk)
Merge to C programming language. Criticism is notable to an extent. A whole article on it is madness however. --.:Alex :. 11:32, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to C programming language per nom. Criticism is already covered in the C language page, a separate page for it is not necessary. i believe a redirect is better than a delete in this situation so the article's history can be preserved more easily NewYork483 (talk) 16:38, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect per above Ben1283 (talk) 16:47, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I am going to buck the trend and argue for retaining this article. First, programming languages are not like people, which the quoted guideline focuses on, in the sense that they have a great body of support views and criticism views. They naturally attract criticism, while the support is in a description of the features of the language. Given that both the parent article and this fork are quite large, I suggest it is kept, but some answers to the criticisms added. --Bduke (talk) 00:22, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge the abridged version to C programming language. -- Mark Chovain 13:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to C programming language. CRocka05 (talk) 03:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Salvage sourced and relevant content into C programming language, but I don't see the utility in leaving around a stale redirect... how many people are going to search wikipedia for "Criticism of the C programming language"? Blaxthos ( t / c ) 04:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The article was intentionally split off (by consensus) from the main article on C because of its size, which is necessary for adequate coverage of the subject (criticisms of C). Having that much criticism in the main C article unbalanced the article by giving excessive emphasis to negative attributes. As Bduke noted, many of the guidelines in Wikipedia:Criticism don't work well when applied to this kind of subject matter. For example, spreading the criticism throughout the article would significantly impair the exposition of what C is. I also note that much of the commentary above is incorrect: it is not a POV fork (in fact its editors have strived to maintain a neutral POV, and it is appropriately referenced in the main C article); sources could be provided if there were serious dispute about the reality of the criticisms (keep in mind that the editors are volunteers whose limited spare time has to be prioritized); the article was not proposed for deletion under another name; the article title is not the appropriate search criterion, and the criticism article is as likely to be found by a keyword search where it is as if it were embedded into the other article. Links are a powerful tool for convenient organization of information. — DAGwyn (talk) 23:56, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep Wikipedia is not paper and there is no limit to how in depth we can cover any topic. In this case there is enough verifiable material to warrant an article. This should to me merged into C. It was split of from C in the first place! This was decided by consensus at Talk:C (programming language)/Archive 7#Reasons_for_not_promoting. I trust the editors of the article to organized this information as they see fit. Jon513 (talk) 16:28, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. While this is information that really belongs in C programming language, it was split off from that article to keep the size manageable. That's a perfectly legitimate reason for splitting up an article, and re-merging after such a split would just be silly. Klausness (talk) 16:31, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.