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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trek73 (2nd nomination)

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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 keep. Some of the arguments presented during this AfD are confusing to say the least, but regardless, it appears that there is no consensus for deletion. –Juliancolton | Talk 00:11, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Trek73

[edit]
AfDs for this article:
Trek73 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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As per article talk page, there seems to be a lack of notability to support this article. The references given after the last AfD are pretty lacking, they simply describe the game as having been played in a university and by two people in particular. I checked (as per the article talk page) on Google, Googlebooks and Googlenews and could find nothing else other than personal websites on the game. Perhaps my Google-fu is weak, but I would like it noted that I had searched and am not using this Afd for general article cleanup. Alastairward (talk) 21:28, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All I was looking for were some reliable, third party sources, that provide more than trivial mention of the source material. There are a lot of fan sites certainly, I found those through the Google search that I performed already. Alastairward (talk) 08:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty much the entire history of early computing is not available via Internet research. Journals and magazines of the 1970s and 1980s have not been fully indexed and made available on line though Google Books says Trek73 has a mention in one of the issues of Byte magazine from 1976.
The current on-line evidence of notability for Trek73, and games such as Adventure, is that there's continued fan interest 35 years later. One surprise is no one has written a recent RS article about how some of early computing devices and applications continue to attract interest today. --Marc Kupper|talk 01:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Marc, regarding your point about internet research, two out of four "references" already given in the article are from books. The information seems to be out there about such games, in this case it just seems that there isn't anything significant about it to merit a non-trivial article in a reliable source. Don't you think that there might be something to your second paragraph, that there doesn't seem to be a recent RS article given the supposed continued interest? Alastairward (talk) 09:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Again, wouldn't this notability be reflected in more than a trivial mention? Alastairward (talk) 08:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think that the consensus view is that the references are trivial.--Kkmurray (talk) 13:35, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So I've been told, but nobody has been kind enough to elaborate. As I said before, all that seems to be sure from the references, is that the game was worked upon by certain programmers and was popular in an American university. Surely if there's something more to be taken from them, you or the others building this consensus can simply state it? Why else would this have reached AfD? Alastairward (talk) 15:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that finding evidence of independent/reliable/secondary coverage from the 1973 to late 1970s period will be tough. One thought is Electronics (magazine) which was the "computer magazine" of the era. FWIW, a rewrite of the game may qualify as WP:GNG coverage if the independent sources show the developers put a great deal of effort in faithful duplication of the algorithms or other aspects. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is my main complaint when writing about early computer history. I call it "the internet black hole". Many topics that would be trivially easy to document today due to widespread internet presence and archiving went undocumented in the past because dead trees cost more money. And in the 70's it was considerably more expensive to publish than it is today, even in the same format. It's a bit sad that so much great history is locked up behind the paywalls of people like the IEEE and ACM and are unlikely to ever be set free. Maury Markowitz (talk) 01:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That era is hardly unique. People did not stop documenting their experiences on pieces of dead plants just because there were new media available. We have many articles on subjects contemporary to that period which do not rely on first-hand accounts from students of the period in question. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify the point about the number of ports from above, I can identify ten: Precursor $SPACE (Char, 1973), HP2000 BASIC TREK73 (Char, Perry, Lee, and Gee, 1973),[4] LHS BASIC version (Perkins, 1974), C Port (Pare, 1984), C Port (Williams, 1984), Combined Pare/Williams C port (Okamoto, Yee, 1985),[5] DOS Lattice C (Soussan, 1985), Turbo Pascal (Chu, 1985),[6] C/Curses version (Chu, 1990),[7] FreeBSD Port (Dillon, 1999).[8] --Kkmurray (talk) 02:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Maury, this "internet black hole", is simply irrelevant. You have decided yourself that there is a great deal of history to this game, if only someone would produce a significant article on it in a reliable third party publication. That's just your own OR, if such a publication does not exist, even if you think it should, then that's that really. Notability has not been supplied, wishing hard that it should does nothing for this article. Alastairward (talk) 09:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The games are utterly unrelated in every possible way except their name. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hobit, may I ask if you would clarify please? You seem to be essentially saying that it's notable, but we can't cite that notability. That's the crux of the reason for the AfD, if it's so "darn notable" where's the cite? Alastairward (talk) 21:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Great question. WP:N is a fine guidepost for what makes a subject notable--If there is significant coverage in RSes, it's notable and otherwise not. But it is a guideline, and not policy, for a reason. Sometimes the guideline is wrong. Here we have a topic that is important from a computer games history viewpoint but that isn't a topic covered very well by RSes. So we be _darn_ sure we are meeting WP:V and write the best article we can because we believe the topic is notable in the dictionary definition meaning "worthy of note" even if it doesn't meet the goalpost set by WP:N. Hobit (talk) 17:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've had an article deleted that I believed was notable and had similar sources to back it up. I've had articles deleted or merged that other users have been adamant were notable. None of which matter since nobody could provide sources to prove they really were notable. Nobody has done so for this article, all we have in essence is the word of the editors here. Assuming good faith is all well and good, but we can't include things on someone's promise alone. You might very well point out that this isn't a paper encyclopaedia, why not have an article on everything? Well, that would pretty much open the flood gates to so many articles that we couldn't spend the time to verify what we're adding. To counter what you said, I say that the twin goals of notable articles backed up by verified sources are worth maintaining and this article just doesn't cut it. All we can say from the sources for sure is that it was a university project and really that's it. Alastairward (talk) 18:24, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think we can verify that it was felt to be an important project years ago. And yes, we trust editor's opinions. That's why we have discussions. Hobit (talk) 19:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's the sticking point, we can't verify anything other than the opinion of fans online and while it's good to know other editors are being honest, that's not the bar for the inclusion of material in Wikipedia. We have discussions not just to provide opinions, but to provide opinions on the material being added and how it can be verified and proved to be notable. Alastairward (talk) 20:04, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it's time to add Category:Wikipedians who have played Trek73? :-) --Marc Kupper|talk 05:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
More OR? Simply remembering the game does not constitute a reliable source nor does it supply notability. Alastairward (talk) 07:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There are two separate questions here. A) Does this meet WP:N and B) does this meet WP:V. I think we have near consensus that this doesn't meet WP:N but should be kept anyways (WP:IAR if you want a rule for that, but WP:N is a guideline and not policy for a reason). Are you arguing past that and saying we can't verify the existence of the game or anywhere near enough stuff to be able to make a decent stub? Hobit (talk) 17:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Very true. WP:NOTABILITY can be trumped if editors explain themselves well enough. A mitigating factor is the age of this game - and the editors! - which makes it harder to find reliable sources, though contemporary computer magazines will almost certainly have covered it. The game is obviously popular, which can sometimes act as a guide in lieu of significant coverage in reliable sources, though it's not a precedent I want to see set often. Fences&Windows 18:01, 28 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.
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