Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Plotutils

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 no consensus. no consensus on notability JForget 22:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Plotutils

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I questioned the notability of this topic, to which I got a few "I think it's notable" type comments. A couple of people did some useful research and managed to find some sources mentioning the program which have now been added to the article as sources and external links. However, none of the sources provide significant coverage as required by Wikipedia:Notability. Rather, the sources show that some people have used the software in research, but so what: it would be more surprising if the software had NEVER been used and these mentions are clearly trivial. I also cannot see how inclusion of the software in some Linux distributions, along with the thousands of other standard routines and libraries, in any way establishes notability, nor has any evidence been given to show that it does beyond the aforesaid "I think it's notable" comments.

In summary, this software gets a lot of hits and is mentioned in presumably reliable sources, but such mentions all appear entirely trivial and insufficient to establity notability. GDallimore (Talk) 09:42, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. "It's used in <some work>" requires editors to count and pass judgement...need someone else to say "this is used my many others in their work" to be a WP:RS of its importance unless we have it used as the cornerstone component of a monumental work (analogy: not every employee of a concert production is notable by virtue of working on that concert until recognized for that work by an entity not part of the tour). "It's included in <list of distros>" is definitely not a source of notability, since many distros allow anyone to submit any useless non-notable unused-by-anyone package and get it accepted: the criteria are solely technical packaging issues. DMacks (talk) 10:11, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep: I think you are allowed to count without doing OR but I guess you could argue about the extent of the contribution made by this piece of software to the works in which it is mentioned. If there is some feature of the software that made it a compelling choice for the larger work, even if only mentioned in passing, that would give you some independent coverage on which to base the article. I guess at worst you could put this into a list of related pieces of software but I'd have a hard time arguing for delete based on quick check of the citations. To the comment " it would be more surprising..." , notability doesn't have to be sensational or particularly impressive to each editor, and while indiscriminate collection of facts or trivia could be an issue, I think that "mundane but notable" is possible just as "obscure but notable" may mean that you have to dig or find dead-tree sources. I guess one thing to think about is the encyclopedic value of other mundane things that may be mentioned in "materials and methods" sections and consider criteria more generally. Naming a specific chemical vendor may not make that vendor notable based just on that coverage ( " company Z provided compound X to experiment Y" probably wouldn't be included in article on Z even if significant coverage existed elsewhere ) unless it has some specific attribute. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 11:25, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with what you're saying about considering whether the software was important to the project in question. Although I haven't looked through all the google scholar hits, none of the ones I did look at seemed to say more than "when generating these graphs we used Plotutils, which is a simple graphing utility". So, they aren't completely silent about why they chose this particular program, but I don't think saying something is simple is anything more than a trivial mention.

As for the "more surprising" comment, that was just intended to highlight that simply because several people have used a piece of software doesn't make it notable. I'm not saying it would automatically be notable if nobody had used it, but that would at least have been interesting! Basically, it was an attempt at light-hearted humour, something that never really works in typed text. The important bit was that the sources that do mention the software do not provide significant discussion on which a verifiable article could be based, and I'm sorry if my poor joke hid the important stuff. GDallimore (Talk) 14:29, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I understand, I guess I'm just contrasting notable with "profound" or "disruptive" or etc etc. I guess my point is that had a few of the articles said, " and then we used plot mode X we discovered cold fusion" and plot mode X was only previously mentioned on the software author's website, that could argue for notability as then you could perhaps say " this software contains an implementation of mode X that has been used to discover fusion[], foo[], bar[]

" without needing CNN to do an article on the software. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 15:33, 20 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NW (Talk) 20:52, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete I came here to close or relist the discussion, but it seems to me that sourcing may not be enough for WP:N. Protonk (talk) 03:39, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 12:17, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Sources such as this Google Books result indicate that this software is notable. The introduction of this software begins on page 316 and ends on page 320. I cannot see pages 317-319 because they are not part of the Google Books preview; however, they most likely cover this software, since page 320 discusses the software in-depth. I was also able to discover this page by Ph.D. student from the University of Osnabrück. These sources indicate that there are more off-line sources that could be used to source and expand the article. Cunard (talk) 05:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I do not see how these sources are discussing the software in detail. The first is just instructions for installing it so it can then be used to study GIFs and other image file formats - ie it is not about the software at all, but about image file formats. The second is a pie chart that has been created using the software and a mention that Plotutils was used to make it. How can that possibly be classed as a significant mention? GDallimore (Talk) 10:02, 9 September 2009 (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.