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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 no consensus. There is usually a reason why discussions sit unclosed for a long time. Often its because the discussion is very bad tempered or toxic. Other times its because the discussion isn’t brilliant, which is a bit true here. Most often its because the strength of arguments seems to sit with one side but the trend of the discussion goes against it. That seems to be the case here and is why I find no consensus at this time. It seems possible that the case here is that there is an article to be written but possibly not quite this one. I hope that discussions continue and the focus is clearly established on impeccable sources so this doesn’t come back to AFD. If it does, it is entirely possible then outcome might be clearer if the discussion is founded on a really thorough source analysis. Spartaz Humbug! 16:57, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

VisualBoyAdvance

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VisualBoyAdvance (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Doesn't seem to be notable. The majority of refs I get from a google search via the Custom Search engine appear to just be listing it or downloads for it. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:20, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Video games, Technology, and Software. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:20, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I could not find an example of WP:SIGCOV, only trivial mentions in various articles. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:41, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Andre🚐 18:04, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Source 1 seems to be talking about EMulators in general (and is just comparing the easy to use program of VBA as I"m just gonna shorten it to), Source 2 is just a "Best X" article and literally only mentions it as an alternative to Dolphin, Source 3 is just a how-to, Source 4 I can't access at the moment, Source 5 is another how-to, Source 6 just mentions it as one you can use. None of these appear to contribute to notability. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:12, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Andrevan: (pinging) ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:19, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I pretty much went through all of those in my source search. They are all clearly trivial coverage that mention VBA in a single sentence or two, and not the decisive evidence that Andrevan apparently believes them to be. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 18:29, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you're being a bit too dismissive when you say it's "just" a how-to. It's a how-to that RS sites like PC World deigned to cover. That's not trivial. Source 4 is working for me. Axem Titanium (talk) 18:42, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes I know that source 4 isn't broken for everyone. Would much rather not go into detail as to why I can't access it here though. As to the PC World, I don't see how detailing how to install the program contributes to its notability. Yes it's from an RS but just being an RS doesn't automatically mean the source contributes to it's notability. Part of WP:N states that "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." The PC World source i Would say is trivial as it doesn't really describe the software itself but just how to install it. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:49, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Just FYI, source 4 is not about the topic - it is about the phenomenon of "Twitch Plays Pokemon", and the only "coverage" of VBA is a one-sentence mention stating that it was the emulator being used to play it on. Rorshacma (talk) 19:59, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    So Blaze Wolf et al, I looked through the sources that I had somewhat hastily assembled this morning, again. I will concede that several are trivial mentions and that some of the how-tos may not go to notability, though the fact that it was used to power Twitch Plays Pokemon, while a passing mention, is an area that might confer notability if there's an article somewhere that goes more into it. However, regardless, even throwing out most of my sources, I think the PC World source is sufficient, and that along with the Engadget source, VentureBeat, Destructoid, offered by Axem Titanium below, I will stay at keep. I just think this is a notable emulator anyway, it's one of the better-known emulators and one of the earliest with a bunch of forks, and the sources found by Axem do hold up. Andre🚐 21:48, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Keep I've searched for significant coverage but I've found only a few brief passing mentions, like this one and this one which, on their own, don't make the subject notable. It's not notable in general and it doesn't meet WP:NSOFT as well.
Motivated by "hints" read in a few sources, I've decided to go deeper in my search for mentions in books. Here is what I have found:
In Developer's Dilemma - The Secret World of Videogame Creators, VBA is discussed.
In Retro Gaming Hacks - Tips & Tools for Playing the Classics, VBA is described as "the most popular emulator for the Unix platform" and a guide to its installation is provided.
Considering that, among the articles, there is something that goes beyond the usual installation guide or top-ten, like:
The article "Nostalgic gaming: how playing the video games of your youth reconnects you to yourself", by The Guardian;
Engadget acknowledging that VBA code "enabled handheld emulation since 2004";
... and that the several passing mentions that exist online are published in reliable sources, I think now that the app is/was popular enough in its niche to be noticed by reliable sources and discussed in articles and some books, transforming that popularity into non-trivial notability. For this reason I've changed my suggestion to "keep". ► LowLevel73 (talk) 18:27, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A bunch of one or two sentence name checks, even in the mentioned books. Still not significant, I'm afraid. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 16:11, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have to disagree about the significance of the mention in the first book. While a short paragraph, the author is acknowledging how the emulator's tools surpassed those provided by Nintendo for the GBA. See this extract. And this is not the only source that provides a meaningful mention; I can't evaluate this kind of acknowledgement just by counting the words. ► LowLevel73 (talk) 16:54, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for digging up these sources. My gut feeling was always that VBA had a large impact on a generation of emulation developers but I didn't have the time to uncover all the harder to find sources. It was the gold standard for Nintendo handheld emulation for a long time (maybe it still is? Haven't looked into it recently). Axem Titanium (talk) 17:12, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"how the emulator's tools surpassed those provided by Nintendo for the GBA" I don't recall Nintendo ever supplying tools for the GBA outside of stuff for development. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:48, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Development tools are exactly those that the author of the book is referring to. He explains that "GBA development in the later years benefited greatly for the development of an open source and homebrew project called VisualBoyAdvance".
The author adds that the development tools conveniently integrated in VBA (map-viewers, sprite viewers, visual debugging tool, etc.) made game development easy for hackers, adding that "Not even Nintendo had provided such a host of tools for developing games for GBA". ► LowLevel73 (talk) 19:35, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) That's exactly what that excerpt means---VBA's dev environment became superior to Nintendo's own development tools and mainstream developers started their work on VBA before moving to the official tools. Axem Titanium (talk) 19:36, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that:
1. the Engadget article is a single-paragraph article about VBA.
2. The VentureBeat article tells readers that Engadget has published that article about VBA.
3. The Destructoid article is not even about VBA.
WP:NSOFT provides examples of sources that are questionable and a general idea of the kind and substance of sources that can support notability for apps. ► LowLevel73 (talk) 19:07, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Misread the Destructoid source. It is indeed not about VBA. The other two are good though. A "via" doesn't invalidate the 2nd source running the story sourced to the first place. It's the same as if the NYT reports that the Washington Post scooped a story. Andre🚐 21:52, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, in itself a "via" is neither good nor bad; it depends on what the article actually states. In this particular case, VentureBeat and Engadget inform their readers that they can use VBA on a Palm Pre. They are still two articles and they do contribute a little to notability but, all considered, I still think we are a long way from what would be needed to justify a Wikipedia article. ► LowLevel73 (talk) 22:58, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I listed two Engadget sources above and I think they're both significant coverage. The shortness of the article does not invalidate that it is still significant mainstream coverage. Apologies about the Destructoid one; I misread it and have struck it. Axem Titanium (talk) 03:32, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for pointing out a second Engadget article, that I didn't read. By itself it wasn't much, but a statement motivated me to search a bit deeper in books. After what I've found, and considering the already known articles, I've changed my suggestion to "keep". ► LowLevel73 (talk) 11:26, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies if this has been found before, but Who Are You?: Nintendo's Game Boy Advance Platform - Page 164 has an entire section titled "Visual Boy Advance GX", which is 2+ pages about the Wii port and talks about how people used it: The VisualBoyAdvance GX (VBA-GX) emulator—a Wii-exclusive and optimized port of the open-source Visual BoyAdvance-M—piggybacks on the Wiimote's technical affordances to approximate hardware add-ons included in select GBA cartridges ... and The VBA-GX’s Match Wii Controls feature is exemplary of how fans themselves remix Nintendo's hardware and software in exciting ways. ... By using the Wiimote and Nunchuk, players expand the GBA assemblage in Nintendo's own image—lateral thinking in action yet again.
There's a passing mention but it's a fairly significant part of Twitch_Plays_Pokémon, here mentioned in TWITCH PLAYS POKEMON/MARI/O/DREEPS St Clair, Michael. Theatre Journal; Baltimore Vol. 67, Iss. 4, (Dec 2015): 702-706.: dek: TWITCH PLAYS POKEMON. By Anonymous. Based on the Videogame Pokemon Red by Satoshi Tajiri. Python scripts bridging web input to VisualBoyAdvance, emulating Game Boy. February 2014. and body: The TPP implementation of Pokemon Red left the game systems relatively untouched by using an emulator called "VisualBoyAdvance." Emulator software creates an artificial hardware environment, allowing software to run on computers for which it was not designed. Skynxnex (talk) 20:20, 21 September 2022‎ (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:37, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Another source: Chris Kohler. Retro Gaming Hacks: Tips & Tools for Playing the Classics. "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", 2005. ISBN 1449303900, 9781449303907 (Google Books show mention on 5 pages, but no previews, so can't say, if the covarege is broad enough; publisher looks OK). Pavlor (talk) 05:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That one's already been found by LowLevel73 and cited in the article, but thanks for looking, regardless. ostensibly singular userpage (inquire within) 05:28, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Eh, I see (did search with author name, but only name of the book was cited here). Must be more careful next time... Pavlor (talk) 06:06, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Somewhat weak keep. Sources presented during this AfD show at least borderline notability of the article subject. Pavlor (talk) 06:06, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Here's something to consider when trying to evaluate sources for significant coverage. We're talking about an emulator, which is a piece of software that is used as the vehicle to engage with the media you're actually interested in. The closest comparison I can think of is a DVD player. Naturally there will be far more sources discussing the DVD format (and also movies which are printed onto DVDs) rather than the DVD player itself. For a particular model of DVD player, the only sources that are solely about the DVD player itself, and not couched in the context of the media it plays, would be product reviews for that DVD player. And since VBA isn't a commercial product and it's in a legal grey area, we're unlikely to find those either. I contend that the above mentions of VBA are not trivial, even if the mentions are short, because (by analogy) it's rare to even consider the DVD player when reviewing a DVD movie. VBA was crucial to the existence of Twitch Plays Pokemon.[8][9] It helped turn hobbyist game hackers into full-fledged developers.[10] It's on the shortlist of emulators of note for outlets like BusinessInsider and PC World.[11][12] These would be considered trivial mentions in other contexts but I think we need to expand our conception of what is significant coverage when it comes to certain topics that (I feel) are notable but don't attract traditional coverage for various reasons. Axem Titanium (talk) 19:33, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Very good points raised here that I believe should be strongly considered by other editors in this discussion. With these WP:SYSTEMIC reasons for VBA's limited coverage in mind, as well as the most persuasive note that these sources are significant coverage compared to what other emulators usually receive, I am leaning even further in the direction of supporting keep. ostensibly singular userpage (inquire within) 20:34, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongest keep possible per Skynxnex et all. It is relevant in the 'game emulating community'. Even though it isn't well known elsewhere like NYT or USA today. Per WP:5P5. –Daveout(talk) 06:38, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: VBA is one of the most well-known and most used GBA emulators and has been for many years. I don't know how to sign my name properly. -User:Rosedaler 06:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    You can sign your posts with four tildes, like this: ~~~~; the key to do so is generally to the upper left on a standard keyboard. Press Shift and then the "` ~" key to type the tilde. You can see WP:SIG for further guidance if any is needed. Hope this helps! ostensibly singular userpage (inquire within) 07:23, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, thanks for the tip! Rosedaler (talk) 08:35, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    And it works! Rosedaler (talk) 08:35, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. VBA is certainly a notable emulator - it was very widely used for homebrew GBA development (I used to teach a university course using it!) and for reverse-engineering GBA games. If we're going to have articles about individual emulators then it would be odd not to have one on VBA. Adam Sampson (talk) 21:57, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    A little off topic but I didn't know that there were universtiy courses involving emulators. I find that very interesting. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 22:05, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify: I'm really torn here, because I think that we should have an article on this, but I don't think the sources are there (yet). This is a community that works in the shadows for numerous reasons and short of 'exposé' style pieces from mainstream outlets is likely to start that way. But the software is also very widely used. Draftifing gives us more time to find / generate the sources needed. Not your siblings' deletionist (talk) 21:27, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, if not rename: I incorporated a few of the sources in the article, and found another one that hadn't been mentioned before in this discussion, though I don't know if that will be enough to meet WP:SIGCOV. I don't really like the articles that it's been suggested to be merged with due to the target articles' broadness in scope, however, if we rename the article to "Game Boy Emulation" (or something to that effect) we can incorporate emulators such as the mGBA in the article as well, which has received some reliable coverage of its own (such as here, here and here). ReneeWrites (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @ReneeWrites: That's not a bad idea. I like the idea of renaming it to "Game Boy Emulation" and talking about specifically GameBoy emulators in the article. Question is, are there enough GameBoy emulators with significant coverage to be able to be mentioned in the article. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:12, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think so, yes. The VBA/VBA-M is in a bit of a contentious area (as demonstrated by this discussion), the mGBA would be in a similar grey area if it had an article of its own. But the combined coverage of both of these emulators would already be enough for an article. No$GBA is another well-known emulator, and while I haven't begun to look for coverage/sources on that one I'm sure it has a few, as well. ReneeWrites (talk) 14:27, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    This seems like a reasonable compromise, or something like "List of Game Boy emulators." No$GMB is one of the oldest emulators that I know of. It dates to the Nesticle era. Andre🚐 15:56, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relist. This looks like an AFD discussion where early voters advocated "Delete" while editors joining the discussion later are stating a "Keep" opinion. I also note some article improvement has occurred which might be a factor.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 23:29, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep I'd give it a pass; as the one comment above says, the New York Times won't be covering it. Blogs or websites are about the best you'll get for this semi-legal software. The article is at least well documented and uses proper reference tags. This is better than some of the articles we see at AfD; it probably doesn't meet GNG, but it's well-written with decent sourcing. It's a rather substantial article as well; if it was only a few lines, I'd not hesitate to delete it. This is a rather lengthy article. Oaktree b (talk) 00:02, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Fails WP:SIGCOV and WP:NSOFT. In reading the comments above, many of the keep voters admit that there is not enough here to meet GNG and are essentially WP:ILIKEIT arguments. So what policy based rationale are we using for keep? I can't see one. While NSOFT is not an official guideline, it's the only measure we have specifically for software, and no criteria given there matches what is in the article. Otherwise we are left with Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Products and services which doesn't seem to apply either, or with WP:GNG. Other than the The Developer's Dilemma source, I am not seeing anything that rises to the level of independent significant coverage. With only one significant reference of quality, I am not seeing a good policy based rationale for keeping this article. I would support draftifying the article to Game Boy emulation for those who want to work on re-tooling the article to the broader topic; but without sources proving notability of the larger topic I would not support a simple page move in main space at this time. That article should go through the review process at WP:AFC.4meter4 (talk) 16:00, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think you are strawmanning the Keep side. Only the last two make any concessions about the sources possibly not supporting SIGCOV/GNG, a far cry from "many of the keep voters". I have always contended that the coverage as it exists is significant and explained why I think so. Even you admit that The Developer's Dilemma source is significant. I don't see how you can simply discount it and then turn around and still make the argument that there's no SIGCOV. Axem Titanium (talk) 00:02, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Axem Titanium Now look who strawmanning (if that is word...). Look in the mirror. I certainly did not discount the source. The rule of 3 is common consensus at AFD for the number of sources needed to prove WP:SIGCOV which requires "multiple sources with independent significant coverage". We have 1 source of quality; not 3 sources of quality. Hence why this fails our notability policy. I wouldn't consider any of the other sources listed above or in the article as in-depth reliable independent sources that can establish notability. We need two more source of the same or better quality as The Developer's Dilemma source to establish the topic passes WP:SIGCOV. Best.4meter4 (talk) 05:17, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Then we have a difference of opinion. I think multiple of the other sources listed here qualify as significant and you do not. In terms of numbers though, only two out of ten people arguing keep here equivocate about whether the sources qualify as SIGCOV, so I don't think it's accurate to say "many". I don't think I've mischaracterized your position. You simply think the sources people here have provided don't count, which is your prerogative. Axem Titanium (talk) 06:35, 6 October 2022 (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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