Wikipedia:Perl Mediation/Archive

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Perl Mediation. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.

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)

Subtopics

Mediation is pointless

Sorry ... why should anyone care? This is one person, -Barry-, against consensus. This is a waste of time, and I implore everyone to refuse to participate. Pudge 22:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

That's fine. So I just indicate refused to participate and take you off the mediation effort? Remember the request was made by User:Revragnarok not Barry. jbolden1517 ^Talk 00:27, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Revragnarok, I believe, has not participated in the Perl discussions, so he is new to the discussion, and probably doesn't realize how fully against consensus Barry has already been proven to be. I suggest if you are going to spend your time on this, you do focus your efforts on that, so as to reach resolution quickly. Pudge 16:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

True, I have tried to stay somewhat out of it. I just reported it, etc. I am very pro-Perl so am trying to keep my POV out of this (that and I was busy all weekend). I saw lots of changes by a single person (-Barry-) that nobody seemed to agree with and I personally felt were POV violations, so I moved forward with mediation, etc. because it didn't look like the standard method that I try to follow would've been good enough for all involved. -- RevRagnarok 16:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer that we quickly demonstrate that there is consensus and that the edits were made with valid reasons and not vandalism as has been claimed. Steve p 23:05, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

That's better. If you can demonstrate that there is a consensus and that he refused to act in good faith I'll be happy to indicate that in the report and from there you could go for an rfc regarding Barry rather than regarding the issue. But that's going to take some time. This is a process. jbolden1517 ^Talk 00:27, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Another user has already started a RFC against -Barry- because of this. Yes, I agree it is "everyone against -Barry-" and that the self-proclaimed Perl-hater is not acting in good faith. That's why I started the whole process. -- RevRagnarok 16:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Steve_p: knock yourself out, I guess. It's already clear -Barry- is against consensus from the Talk page. I see no need for mediation here, at all. But it's your time. :-) Pudge 16:15, 30 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)

OK fair enough. So let me try again. You are arguing that:

We don't have good numbers on Perl's popularity
Even if we did popularity figures they are not important because we don't generally consider such things?

Is that correct? jbolden1517 ^Talk 20:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Correct, there is no verifiability, and whether Perl's popularity has fallen or not is not criticism of Perl. Even if Perl's popularity has fallen, using it as a reason for criticising Perl is a case of bandwagon fallicy. If there is a valid or verifiable criticism of Perl, it should stay. Criticisms based on specious reasoning are not appropriate, and a consensus of the editors have agreed. Steve p 21:42, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure you are correct here. Things like availability of hires, availability of libraries, 3rd party support... are all functions of popularity. Popularity is of a great deal of importance when choosing a language from a practical standpoint. Right now Perl has publicly available libraries collection second only to Java. On the other hand were usage to fall off by say 90% or so its utility would be diminished substantially. Another 90% from there and directly hiring for the skill sets becomes very difficult. That most certainly does effect language choice. If there genuinely was a consensus on the Perl page not to address issues of popularity that would be very curious since its popularity (and its effects i.e. CPAN and the "everyone knows Perl") more so than any other feature that makes Perl a "safer" choice than Ruby or Python. Purely on the merits its a much more complex choice which comes down to subtle opinions.

So again I'm not here to overturn a consensus but I'd fine it very odd. Perl is one of the most well known languages and is used freely in the way that C++, Java, Cobol, are used not the way Ruby, Lisp and Ada are used. The bandwagon fallacy doesn't apply when an increase in popularity has meaningful effect. Quite simply in choosing a programming in a professional environment popularity matters. How much is an area of debate jbolden1517 ^Talk 01:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you missed my point. My point is not that popularity doesn't matter when selecting a language. Popularity, however, is not a valid criticism of a language. For example, "Language A is more popular than language B; therefore, language A is better". The popularity arguments have nothing to do with the criticism of Perl, the language. My personal opinion is that the RFCs for Perl 6 are a much more valid criticism of Perl. Those are the real gripes that Perl programmers have had with the language. Steve p 02:01, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

We don't have a way to measure popularity. The Tiobe results, besides being a flawed methodology, only measure what people talk about. Out of all the people that do anything, no matter what it is, very few of them talk about it on the net. It's not been my personal experience that popularity matters when choosing a programming language. People care about it getting the job done. Indeed, that's how Perl, Ruby, etc, got to be where they are. They didn't spring out of nothingness into instant popularity.

This is the page I'm getting the popularity ratings from.

OK that's a piece of data. Its being questioned. Do you have any other independent data which supports the relative positions? Also you didn't answer my questions above, could you answer those? jbolden1517 ^Talk 01:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[defense of Tiobe numbers snipped] Barry, before we get into either attack or defending those numbers I want to address the more general questions. Popularity of programming languages is not an obscure topic we have a variety of ways of measuring it. Right now the question is about whether popularity figures should be used at all. jbolden1517 ^Talk 01:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Randal L. Schwartz, co-author of several Perl books published by O'Reilly, has said that OSCON's organizers are openly hostile to Perl, and that Perl isn't interesting to O'Reilly anymore.

Another piece of evidence. But do remember this is an off the record comment. Its substantially weaker than an official statement but still definitely something to show falling interest. jbolden1517 ^Talk 01:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

In the article Comparison of programming languages, at this time, the Tiobe data is there (last two columns of the top chart) under the headings Serp Rank and Serp Rank Change. I'd like it to remain there. (I'll post in the Benchmarking section later)-Barry- 00:14, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Those seem like reasonable facts for that chart. I'll see if other's object. jbolden1517 ^Talk 01:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, in response to your three questions:

1. I don't think the popularity part of the debate is about whether Perl usage, webhits, or book sales have declined. I think the debate is about whether enough people consider the popularity change of Perl a "con" to justify mentioning it in the Con subsection of the Opinion section. But maybe some others think that there should be good evidence to support a decline before putting it in the Con section. Since the Con section is a subsection of the Opinion section, I think we need to determine whether certain opinions belong there by trying to determine whether they're common enough opinions. But I'd have no objection to including some relevant facts as well.

2. I basically presented all I know about whether there's an actual decline in Perl's popularity in my first post in this section. It's based on the Tiobe chart and Randal's comments. I've seen various other comments supporting it, but I don't have references.

3. I think the popularity issue belongs in the Con subsection.

-Barry- 02:47, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Would you have any problem with presenting those two things in a pro section for Perl. I.E. one of the things that's unique about Perl (relative to other dynamic languages) is its popularity. CPAN is gigantic (on par Java's library), many many programmers know Perl, .... You could write a paragraph about how popular Perl is and then mention that there is anecdotal evidence that its popularity is declining. Give your two points in the reference section right after. Does that sound reasonable? jbolden1517 ^Talk 03:03, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not conviced of using popularity as a Pro or Con, but if this can put an end to the issues on the Perl page, then I'll go along with it. Steve p 03:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem at all. Tiobe's data shows Perl to be more popular than Python and a bunch of other languages. It's one of the reasons I chose to learn Perl. I saw so many free Perl scripts around the web that I ignored the part in Learning Perl about Perl not being the right language if you'll be using it less often than (forgot how often). (Hmmm...something else for the con section). And yes, CPAN is huge. Not sure that's about popularity, but maybe you can link it to popularity somehow. If it doesn't logically fit in a certain section, that's not as important to me as making sure nothing is left out. -Barry- 03:37, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. We have a compromise then on the popularity issue. So go ahead and do that paragraph. jbolden1517 ^Talk 03:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Um ... there IS NO DATA that shows as a matter of fact that one language is more popular than another. No such data can exist. This is the problem. And it is why assertions to the contrary will continue to be removed. You say "I'm not sure you are correct here," that popularity can be measured, but you are incorrect. Those are only clues, they do not give us an answer. The only way to come up with an answer is to try to subjectively analyze the clues. Is a decrease in book sales indicative of a decrease in popularity, or does it simply mean that there are already so many books out there, for free and for sale as used books, that the market can't handle more? Does a decrease in mention on job listings mean the skill is less desired, or that it is merely assumed the job seeker will have that skill? CPAN size might be irrelevant to a language that already includes that functionality in the core language. "Third-party support" is immeasurable. You really are barking up the wrong tree here, pretending that this can be measured reasonably. We can know without looking that Perl is more popular than Ada, but you can't know if Perl is more or less popular than PHP. And again, this is Barry versus consensus; mediation is not the answer here, and I will refuse to abide by your decision to let Barry post it, as claims of popularity are unsupportable by facts, and inclusion of such goes against consensus. Screw Barry and his damned time-wasting calls for more mediation simply because consensus is against him. Pudge 16:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Before I propose some wording for the pro section, I want to point out that Steve p said he'll go along with this compromise if it puts an end to the issues on the Perl page. It won't. I intend to bring several other issues to mediation, myself this time, or to arbitration of there's refusal to mediate. -Barry- 05:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Barry you are a long way from arbitration. The arb committee doesn't take content disputes they take questions of policy and disciplinary matters; and POV pushing is not disciplinary matter. They rely on the dispute resolution process, what is happening here and further steps, for questions of content. It would only becomes an arb committee issue if:for example, I determine that somebody is not acting in good faith and am unable to change their attitudes, this judgement i upheld by an administrator, its then upheld by the rfc process and mild sanction is ineffective. Or alternately it can become an arb committee issue if I were to determine this issue is too complicated and kicked this over to the mediation committee and they made a determination of bad faith issue sanction and those sanctions are ignored. If you want to add issues go ahead and add one of them to the bottom of this page in a new section and we'll get started on it. In the meanwhile I want to wrap up this issue. So please write the paragraph discussed above. jbolden1517 ^Talk 11:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

jbolden wrote "The arb committee doesn't take content disputes they take questions of policy and disciplinary matters; and POV pushing is not disciplinary matter."

See this arbitrator's opinion on hearing a case: "Accept, but narrowly to look at POV-pushing, not to rule on content." -Barry- 00:03, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

And "As for article disputes, we do take them on; we merely forsee that it is unlikely that this will be the bulk of our work. James F. (talk) 23:04, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)" -Barry- 17:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I stand by my comment. I'm sure if you go through the logs of all the arb cases you'll find a few where they have made content rulings. But by in large the don't. By in large the arb committee won't be the first step in dispute resolution but right now they are taking a case directly (because they consider it too disruptive). Its not going to happen for this case. I'm not sure why you keep pushing this issue. jbolden1517 ^Talk 17:50, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Just trying to save time. I could summarize all they'd need to know pretty well. There's been about 200K of discussion, mediation, and RfC. I might give it a shot. -Barry- 23:39, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

You suggested mentioning that one of the unique things about Perl relative to other dynamic languages is its popularity, but it looks like PHP is a more popular dynamic language. It's not as powerful as Perl though, so maybe I could qualify the statement somehow. I don't like the sound of "full featured language." Not sure. Then there's Visual Basic, which is also more popular than Perl, but there's room for qualification there too because it's a static/dynamic hybrid. I don't know if that's a meaningful distinction from dynamic though. I tried looking up these terms, but it has to do with variable types and I don't know what they are either.

I wouldn't have a problem praising Perl's popularity without being specific, and I can add the large library praise too, but I think all I have in me is one sentence for each. Maybe a third if I mention Tiobe's anecdotal evidence of Perl's popularity in a seperate sentence. I'll see what I could come up with if nobody else suggests anything. -Barry- 16:47, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, there was already stuff about Perl being popular and about CPAN, but I added what I could: http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Perl&diff=55820166&oldid=55748002 -Barry- 23:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

So, Could I add the following now (between the lines)?

--------------

There's also criticism of a less technical nature that may be no less important to some. Some people believe that Perl's popularity has declined. As of May, 2006, the [http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm TCPI Long Term Trends chart] of the ten most popular programming languages, based on the results of search engine queries, shows that Perl's popularity is at its lowest since before June, 2001 (the earliest date plotted), and has dropped more than any other language over the past year.

There are also signs of a decline in Perl's popularity from book publisher O'Reilly. OSCON — the open source convention sponsored by O'Reilly — is much less Perl-oriented than it used to be. [[Randal L. Schwartz]], co-author of several Perl books published by O'Reilly, has said that OSCON's organizers are openly hostile to Perl, and that Perl isn't interesting to O'Reilly anymore.<ref>Paraphrased from merlyn's posts (Randall Schwartz's IRC handle) on [[Freenode]]'s #perl6 irc channel, logged [http://colabti.de/irclogger/irclogger_log/perl6?date=2006-05-10,Wed&sel=86#l151 here] and [http://colabti.de/irclogger/irclogger_log/perl6?date=2006-05-10,Wed&sel=93#l161 here].</ref>

--------------

-Barry- 23:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

No too much detail and too weasel words. My first impression is to go for this

''There is evidence that Perl's popularity has declined to its lowest levels since June, 2001 <ref> long terms trend chart [http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm] </ref> <ref>[Randal L. Schwartz]], co-author of several Perl books published by O'Reilly, has said that OSCON's organizers are openly hostile to Perl, and that Perl isn't interesting to O'Reilly anymore [http://colabti.de/irclogger/irclogger_log/perl6?date=2006-05-10,Wed&sel=86#l151] [http://colabti.de/irclogger/irclogger_log/perl6?date=2006-05-10,Wed&sel=93#l161]''

See the difference. One sentence not 2 paragraphs with the same information handled in footnotes. jbolden1517 ^Talk 00:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I added a revised version to the article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Perl&diff=55903207&oldid=55863865 ). Still one sentence, but I added a little:

On the less technical side, there's evidence that Perl's popularity is at its lowest since June, 2001<ref>[http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm TCPI Long Term Trends chart]</ref> and that related industries have shown less interest in Perl.<ref>[[Randal L. Schwartz]], co-author of several Perl books published by O'Reilly, has said that [[OSCON]]'s organizers are openly hostile to Perl, and that Perl isn't interesting to O'Reilly anymore. See merlyn's posts (Randall Schwartz's IRC handle) [http://colabti.de/irclogger/irclogger_log/perl6?date=2006-05-10,Wed&sel=86#l151 here] and [http://colabti.de/irclogger/irclogger_log/perl6?date=2006-05-10,Wed&sel=93#l161 here]</ref>, which has consequences on the job market and the availability of Perl programmers.

-Barry- 10:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the popularity stuff belongs in the Perl#Opinion section, either Perl#Pro or Perl#Con. As discussed in Talk:Perl#Opinion is not advocacy, the purpose of the Opinion section is to present and summarize opinions that are held of Perl. Data indicating the prevalance of various opinions isn't really to the point. Compare the American politics page, which has separate sections titled American politics#Political culture (outlining the political views of Americans) and American politics#Political parties and elections (tabulating recent election results).

If we moved Popularity data to its own section, then we could start to analyze and document it in a orderly fashion. Questions include

- how many people know Perl?

- how many people like Perl?

- how many people use Perl?

- how many people are paid to use Perl?

- how many companies use Perl?

- how many Perl programs are there?

- how many Perl programs are in production (i.e. run regularly)?

- how much programming is done in Perl?

-- programs/year?

-- KLOC/year?

- what is the availability of Perl books/tutorials/documentation/training resources?

- what is the availability of Perl interpreters?

- what is the availability of Perl code libraries?

- what is the availability of Perl development environments?

- what is the availability of Perl programmers?

- what is the availability of Perl consultants?

Swmcd 01:42, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that's great. If you have access to good cites for any reasonable subset of that data that's far better then a line or two. Yes if we know where to get that data then go for it. jbolden1517 ^Talk 01:59, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Indicating the prevalence of opinion is related to opinion and belongs in the opinion section. It's not just a statistic. It helps people determine what language considered good by others (and which they should learn) and it tells people how hard it would be to find programmers if a project is begun in a certain language.

We don't have all of the information you mention ready to add to the article, so a separate section isn't a real option now, but I agree that you should go for it if you write all that up. For now, we just have some Tiobe statistics. If we did have all of what you mentioned written up, then I think we'd still need to put some of that in the pro or con section, and I might want it to be repeated in a separate section too.

I think it should be pointed out in the Pro section that when a language is popular, it's easier to find good programmers when you need them. Using your strict interpretation of "opinion," you'd probably word it as "some employers prefer popular languages because it makes it easier to find programmers" and then you might even want me to show you some statistics to prove it. We shouldn't worry much about either the wording or the proof in this case. If it could be worded like a fact and it is one, then it wouldn't bother me to word it like a fact rather than like some people's opinion. I wouldn't consider that advocacy. And if it is a fact, we can assume it's some people's opinion without a Gallup poll. -Barry- 02:44, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Wait a second...I must have not read things completely. The TIOBE link and the Randal quote are not appropriate. They should be removed. They are not a criticism of the language. They are POV-pushing. Steve p 10:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, the above was made prior to the first coffee again. I have serious concerns with the addition of the Randal quote. First, as jbolden1517 mentioned, it is an off the record comment. Second, I have serious questions regarding it pushing a POV. As I pointed out on Talk:Perl, -Barry- has previously written "I will be taking whatever action I deem reasonable to hurt O'Reilly. I'm not limiting it to not buying their books." The addition of Randal's quote can easily be interpreted as an action to hurt O'Reilly in the Perl community, or an action to embarass a bestselling O'Reilly author. The TIOBE link is fine if this can keep the compromise afloat. Steve p 15:44, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I just restored the changes from last night except for the links to Randal's comments. I believe they still need a bit more discussion. Steve p 00:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The comment is from THE most notable Perl expert. Larry Wall even said that Randal's undoubtedly a better Perl programmer than he is. It contains two extraordinary comments about OSCON and O'Reilly. It's a Con, and perfect for the Con section, along with the Tiobe data, to demonstrate decreased popularity. In fact, the quote belongs in that "paragraph" about popularity, because it's currently only one short sentence long, and I don't like having to bounce around to footnotes anyway, but I compromised with the footnotes.

Jbolden said it's "Another piece of evidence. But do remember this is an off the record comment. Its substantially weaker than an official statement but still definitely something to show falling interest."

No way would I cut it. If you want to mention Randal's comments from my talk page somehow to water it down, that would be fine, but I don't think I'd ever give the ok to cutting it unless the decision was made by a panel of administrators, or at least arbitrators or mediators. Well, even then I wouldn't ok it, but I'd be more quiet about it and wouldn't revert.

I'm still boycotting O'Reilly, and if this hurts them, I think that's good, so you can question my motives, but those are great quotes and I want them in. -Barry- 04:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Steve - I liked you last set of changes. I think at least on the language shootout I feel that this captures Barry's interests. So first off Barry are you satisfied with the popularity result? As for the Randal comment, Barry the fact that Randal is an excellent Perl programmer does not mean he is an expert on the book business. His being an author helps. As for hurting O'Reilly I don't see how this does that publishes all the time announce interest in various genres, even if true I don't see how it is damaging to O'Reilly. Objectively O'Reily is not pursuing Perl publications at the clip they were 4 years ago. So the evidence does tend to support the quote. I really do believe (but again I may be naive) that you are seeing more there then is really there. Author X says publisher Y isn't very interested in topic Z. Given that author X writes on topic Z that's not a bad quote. OTOH I don't see how the intent to harm plays out, that is how the quote embarrasses X or Z. Further remember this is a footnote at this point not body article. Barry has already agreed. If you want we might be able to just site the log location. jbolden1517 ^Talk 11:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm satisfied with what Steve did with the popularity data from Tiobe. He basically reverted to the version I added per this mediation, which had been removed. Unfortunately, the Tiobe data has been removed again from the Con section and needs to be put back. It's currently only in the Pro section, praising how popular Perl is. The con version, about the decreasing popularity needs to be put back.

The link to the shootout site is good, but I still want some time to decide whether I want to add some numbers, as you said I could (if they're good). -Barry- 18:39, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

-Barry-, I believe I reverted back to jbolden1517 changes. If I missed something, please let me know exactly what is missing. Steve p 20:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

This revision has to be undone to put the Tiobe information back in the con section. Scarpia reverted it after you added it. -Barry- 22:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

In other words, the following has to be put back in the con section because Scarpia reverted it after you added it:

On the less technical side, there's evidence that Perl's popularity is at its lowest since June, 2001<ref>[http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm TCPI Long Term Trends chart]</ref>

I suppose I could try adding it again, but it's been reverted twice already, so I won't bother. I don't know how mediation will ever end if the content decisions don't even stick for the duration of the mediation. I guess we could just work out all of the problems here and ignore whether it's actually added to the article, and maybe deal with that later. But the other issue is Randal's quote, which I want in too, so I guess there's no agreement on the content yet. The version I want is on the right side of this diff. -Barry- 00:03, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I would absolutely remove it again. It's false. It is not true. There is no objective evidence that Perl's popularity has decreased, let alone that it is at its lowest "point" since any date, since it has never been measured. And apart from it being -- factually speaking -- entirely false, consensus has already ruled on it. Therefore this is not an issue up for debate. The end. Pudge 02:25, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Barry - Comments like the above really don't help things. Stop deliberately provoking anger and making people mistrust your edits. Also as I said to you before you aren't going to get a committee looking at this. Mediation cabal really is the last nice statge. Content is going to be me or maybe one more step up and those will be issue RFC that take a lot of time on each minor point. Disciplinary issues go higher but that would be directed at you. You don't want that. Stop trying to be an anti-Perl martyr and stay focused on writing a good encyclopedia article. 11:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, several popular Perl books were released last year, and the Perl book market has improved as was discussed here. Unfortunately, no actual data was provided. Steve p 12:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I suppose Scarpia is allowed to do this without discussing it here or providing a reference, and I'm not surprised he did. This is why I wanted a vote on each of the issues, and not one that includes Perl editors. -Barry- 05:42, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Once the RFC goes up in flames if I don't get support from the regular editors I'm going to lock the page. I agree this was bad behavior and its not continue for more than another week or two jbolden1517 ^Talk 11:46, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

You are wrong, it was not bad behavior. That page, factually speaking, IS NOT EVIDENCE that Perl is declining in popularity. You keep thinking popularity can be simply quantified, and it cannot be. You're wrong. If you would really like me to walk you through this all I will consider it, but you need to learn something about social science methodology and how incorrect you are about this.

Go ahead. But walk Barry through this. He's a participant, I'm just a referee . If he agrees it doesn't matter what I think. jbolden1517 ^Talk 23:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

As to locking the page: I thought you said you were not here to override consensus? That's precisely why that link was removed, because consensus says it is inappropriate. I am going to assumne good faith on your part here, but not for much longer if you continue to threaten to do what you said you would not do. Pudge 16:12, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Pudge - I am perfectly willing for you not to participate in mediation. I am not willing to have you troll this page. You are going to have to decide whether you want to become less involved in this dispute or follow my lead. I have been very clear from the start of what I will and will not do. I absolutely positively rejected the idea that because a bunch of editors are ganging up on another editor that represents a "consensus" that I would not challenge. I indicated that I would support the consensus if I see Barry acting in bad faith. So far he's been cooperative. Word for word If you can demonstrate that there is a consensus and that he refused to act in good faith I'll be happy to indicate that in the report and from there you could go for an rfc regarding Barry rather than regarding the issue. But that's going to take some time. This is a process. Several times you have rejected the process which is your right. I'm not here to make you happy, or to drive Barry off. I'm here to change the culture on this board so that everyone's opinion is valued and everyone is able to contribute meaningfully. Now you can think what ever you want about me but that is the intent. jbolden1517 ^Talk 23:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, and I should care what you think ... why? Follow your "lead"? Who made you a leader of anything? And yes, you made it clear you will not go against consensus. Very clear. And then you threatened to lock the page for following consensus. You also made that very clear. This is not about "ganging up," and if you were any decent "mediator" -- I use that term very loosely, because this process is a joke -- you would realize that. It is a *fact* that there is no way to quantify popularity. Consensus has been reached on this issue. This is not ganging up against Barry, this is how the process is supposed to work. This is, quite clearly, simply Barry going against consensus. And you are not only enabling his warped notion that going against consensus is reasonable, but you are actually defending him, saying he's right, picking sides in the actual dispute! You are not merely going against consensus, you are dictating that consensus was wrong!

I could not care less whether Barry is in bad faith, or you are. This is about the fact that popularity cannot be quantified, and about the fact that consensus was reached on that point, and about the fact that Barry is ignoring consensus -- whatever his motives -- and about the fact that you are, too. And Barry's opinion will never be valued as long as he keeps insisting opinions are facts, and keeps rejecting consensus, and keeps trying to escalate his opinions into official disputes. In what alternative universe do you live in where every opinion can, or should, be valued? In the real world, the opinions that are well-founded are valued, and ones that are not, are not.

You say I am a troll when I bring up perfectly valid and relevant points. That in itself is telling. Not to your motives, but to your lack of ability as a mediator. Pudge 01:54, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Any statistician will tell you that popularity can be quantified. The Tiobe search engine data doesn't measure the general popularity of languages. It does measure a specific kind of popularity, but it doesn't even do that perfectly. But that's still an indicator of the general popularity of Perl. It's undoubtedly an indicator in at least some people's minds, including my own. It's evidence, though it isn't proof. It shouldn't be presented as something it's not, but it should be presented in the Con section of Opinion.

As for consensus, I'm no expert on the rules, but I'd be surprised if none of the editors who are against my edits violated any. In fact, I'm almost positive many have. I'd look at the violator's contribution to the consensus in that light. I'd also give more weight to the opinion of a mediator and administrator. Or if equal weight, I'd get enough of them to outweigh the editors. And if things still went wrong, I'd take advantage of Wikipedia's flexible rules, or change them, to make Wikipedia better. -Barry- 05:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, populariy can be quantified using statistical survey. It is a very common method in most social sciences. That said, what TIOBE is doing is not a statistical survey. They are practicing Data_mining#data fishing. They have run some queries on a few search engines and come up with some correlations. Without cross-verifying their data using other methods, these are interesting correlations, but it is not scientific or statistically sound. No sound conclusions can be made from them. Steve p 11:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, what I meant was as Steve p said: you can do it, if you can get a random sampling of programmers. That in itself would likely be prohibitively difficult, but it is theoretically possible. But I think Steve p implies too much credibility to the data that we're talking about here: even with cross-verifying their data with other (presumably similar) methods, they are still not scientific or statistically sound: you can't improve noise by adding other noise. It is not possible to quantify popularity looking at data which itself does not actually have a direct relationship to popularity.

As I have described, for example, there's no reason to think that counting job listings or resumes bears a direct relationship to popularity; it could be that Perl programmers don't change jobs very often, or that Perl jobs tend to go more to people you know than random people in the job market, or that Perl is an assumed skill that employers and jobseekers don't even bother to mention. Similarly, just because there are (presumably) fewer available Perl courses doesn't mean much, if most people already know a lot about it. Simply put: these collected data do not, rationally, add up to any sort of popularity measurement, *even if the methodology for data collection is itself reliable,* which it is not. I cannot say this strongly enough. Again, saying their data is directly related to popularity is like saying Bible Code references is directly related to popularity. Maybe a better example would be like saying that the color of an object can tell us what texture it is; there is possibly some relationship, but not necessarily, and certainly not one that is quantifiable by simply looking at the colors of various objects.

If someone does a valid social study, using proper social science methodology, including sufficiently random sampling, then that can be appropriate for the page. I won't hold my breath. All that said, what could be done, in theory, would be to say how many Perl jobs are available, or how many Perl courses. Say what the data actually says instead of pretending it says something it is not possible for it to say. Of course, getting good data for how many Perl jobs/courses are available is, realistically, probably not available, either. You can reasonably count things like books and conferences, though. Pudge 02:17, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that their methods are verifyable. Sound statistical method will win out. As I mention below, Google's hot count results change so rapidly, it seems impossible that results are repeatable from hour to hour. Steve p 02:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't realized how unreliable hit counts were until I added links to Google hot counts for Perl, Java, and BASIC using TIOBE's methodology. At the time I added it, Java and Perl were even with 1,780,000 hits, BASIC had over 4 million. Within minutes, however, Java was varying between 1.5 million and 3 million. Perl varied from 1.5 million to 2.5 million. I thought that was bad until I read WP:Google_test#Bias_in_the_Alexa_test. Steve p 01:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Let's not forget that we're talking about the Opinion section. There's a longer reply in the wrong section, which I'll probably move up here by tomorrow if it's not here already. -Barry- 03:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Steve, I saw your last edit summary for the article. You reverted based on bad original research. The popularity rank for the languages might not have changed (relative to each other). Everyone knows that search engines constantly add and remove pages and change in other ways. And like I said, we're talking about opinions, not facts. It's the Opinion section that this data will go in. -Barry- 04:07, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I just looked at what you actually reverted, and it was a good reversion, but for a different reason. You didn't use the correct search term because you added a date to it, which Tiobe doesn't. You actually used a hybrid of Tiobe's method and my old method from Perlmonks. Also, you searched for "Basic programming" instead of "Visual Basic programming" (would match phrases like "I'll teach you some basic programming techniques." And you just used Google.

It's also important that we revert "TIOBE clearly shows its bias when it changes it methodology when it looks like Java, the language they commercially support, appears to drop in popularity." Java did more than just drop. It dropped A LOT over a short period of time for reasons unlikely due to that great a decrease in popularity. I think Tiobe said it's because of Google's changed algorithm. Tiobe responded by using more search engines, which increases accuracy. That doesn't clearly show bias. That will be reverted one way or another for sure. Best to do it now. Scarpia, do you agree?

Could we all post the changes we'd like to make here before we make them? -Barry- 07:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

To quote TIOBE from their "popularity" page, "Some languages are grouped together because they are very similar to each other. An example is the language enty Basic which covers Visual Basic, QBasic, Microsoft Basic, etc." So, if I had a blog, and I said that I learned programming in Basic on my Commodore 64, it would be counted. So, yes, according to their own FAQ, "I'll teach you some basic programming techniques" would count as link for "basic programming" -tv -channel. It will also link to "Bob's Cable: Basic Programming Package". On Google, the first link when I tried is to BASIC_programming_language.

As such, a disclaimer should be necessary. An unexpected swing probably did not show a huge sudden swing it popularity. It just shows how unreliable their methods are. I used Google to see if there was an identifiable reason for switching. From what I've seen in the swinging link counts, is that Basic is close to or exceeds Java's hit count regularly. I find that says more about the soundness of their research.

Also, their decision to use Google Groups and limit it to the last 12 months also slants the results. Languages that are more stable, tend to have more stable and calm mailing list and newsgroups. Many core Perl mailing lists have calmed down, not because their less popular, but because the people are not as contentious with each other. Others work it out on IRC and move on. They also have more specialized groups, where the language name may not even be used. So, a Tomcat mailing list where they discuss JSPs and Servlets all the time may not be counted for Java, as it should. Steve p 11:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

There's no entry for BASIC any more in the chart. I'm pretty sure I remember one a month or two ago, but this month they added the word "visual" in parenthesis in the chart, and the language groupings table doesn't show any other languages included in Visual Basic. The FAQ section does mention BASIC groupings, but that's probably an artifact from when plain old BASIC was used in the chart. Unfortunately, "Much of the Wayback Machine, some of our items are difficult to get to. Wednesday, May 31, should bring most back up, but there will be some lingering issues for this week." so I can't show you the old chart that used plain old BASIC without the "(visual)."

Please read what they say. They lump all the BASICs together in the Visual Basic entry. That's their words, not mine. Steve p 19:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's a compromise offer. Tim O'Reilly has published graphs and data showing changes in programming book sales. His most recent is a bit old, but it at least has verifiable data. As numerous people here have stated, book sales data is a valid verifiable source. I think we should remove all references to TIOBE, Pro or Con, and instead have something like....

Perl's popularity may be falling. In [[2005]], [[Tim O'Reilly]] wrote that "...Python has continued to gain ground against Perl" in terms of book sales. O'Reilly Media uses marketwide book sales data to help determine trends in technology. [http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/06/the_rise_of_ope.html]<ref>[http://conferences.oreillynet.com/presentations/os2004/magoulas_oreilly.pdf What Book Sales Tell Us About the State of the Tech Industry] (pdf)</ref>

The link is to Tim O'Reilly's blog, but as he can be considered a reliable source on technical book publishing and it contains data more so than opinion, I would consider it appropriate. The data used for the graphs is ACNielsen collected data, not O'Reilly sales data. Visitors here can follow Tim's article and check out the graphs. We just need to present the data neutrally and let the readers decide. A reference is included to Tim's presentation regarding how book sales correlate to trends in technology. -Barry-, there is good data and quotes out there. They take some digging to find though. Good research usually does. I don't really care if you add to the Perl#Con section. I doubt that most of the editors do either. All I ask for is good sources. The information from Tim O'Reilly is a good source. The two quotes I added to the Perl#Con section yesterday are good sources. The quote from Lutz Prechelt that you added is a good source. Harmil even cleaned it up for you. Adding sources to Wikipedia is not about finding any link to support a statement. If you stick to good, reliable sources, I think you'll find that people won't have an argument. Steve p 13:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That's good, let's add that, but the Tiobe data should be there too. -Barry- 15:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

No. No TIOBE data. Just verifyable data. Steve p 16:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The part about Perl losing popularity, and that it's currently popular, aren't facts, so it fits in opinion. They're beliefs that I know exist because of what I've heard, and that others can assume exist because of Tiobe's search engine studies. It's pretty clear that more popular is better and less is worse, so it fits in the pro and con section. Reporting popularity data when it can't be or isn't presented as a pro or con opinion should be in a different section. I think we may basically agree with that. -Barry- 04:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't care how you dress up the pig, it is still a pig. By this same logic, it would be perfectly reasonable for me to put up a page that measures how many references to Perl vs. Python are in the Bible Code, and say that it is my opinion that this represents how popular each respective language is. The data being used does not actually, in any reasonable way, support the contention being presented. What you want to include is only slightly more reliable than the Bible Code method. It's not about whether you call it opinion, the fact remains that the whole thing is nonsense and unworthy of being included. Pudge 04:51, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I think we're getting closer here, but we still have to be careful. Your argument seems to be

- the term "perl" has fallen in search engine results relative to the names of other programming languages

- that reflects some opinion of Perl

- so we'll report it in the Perl#Opinion section

There are issues with the evidence and the inferences here, but the real problem is that the argument runs backwards. The Opinion section isn't a dumping ground for unquantifiable or unverifiable assertions. It is a place to report a very specific kind of fact regarding Perl: noteworthy opinions that are held of it. Whatever we put in the Opinion section needs to first state an opinion of Perl. Once we have the opinion in front of us, we can look for evidence that it is noteworthy. Swmcd 02:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That Tiobe page is very popular. It has a Google PageRank of 7 out of 10. Yes, the relevance of Google's PageRank is itself disputed, but that's another one of those imperfect indicators of popularity. I think it's safe to assume that some of the many people who visit Tiobe's website think of the data as more than a curiosity, but here's one example to make this less unverifiable: in this post, dragonchild said "The numbers he comes up with track very closely to what I would consider how those 20 languages are doing, living-wise [about a similar search engine study]....I would put forward that he has stumbled on a useful measure of a language [referring to my original study]....Note - living-ness and useful-ness are two mostly-unrelated concepts. But, I think that it is foolish to disregard either concept in favor of the other."

How about if we create an analysis or similar section after Pro and Con where you can say how bad it is to rely on search engine results for this? Or an analysis subsection in pro and con. Or just name the whole thing criticism and responses. The responses could come from us if they're facts, or others if they're opinions. You could mention that anyone can create a website with many references to a particular programming language. Go on and on with the criticism if you want. I wouldn't complain, as long as it's true. Just as long as you don't imply that there's no correlation between the Tiobe data and actual popularity. Saying it's not known how well it correlates is ok. -Barry- 03:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Do we have consensus that the TIOBE data is about popularity, rather than opinion? And if so, can we remove the TIOBE data from the Perl#Opinion section? Swmcd 13:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I believe there is consensus in creating a Perl#Popularity section. Steve p 15:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

You certainly don't have my approval.

Then the argument is still backwards. If something is going to be reported in Perl#Opinion, then it needs to begin by stating an opinion of Perl. Right now, Perl#Opinion reports some TIOBE data. That data might illustrate an opinion of Perl, but nowhere does it say what opinion it is meant to illustrate. Swmcd 17:04, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I linked to opinions formed by Tiobe data on this mediation page, so fix the wording in the article so there's more opinion-like language. It's not an issue of whether to keep it. It's a wording issue. -Barry- 19:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Please specify which links? Steve p 20:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

"Look at some of the things people are saying about the Tiobe data here (search for the parts where TIOBE is bold). I'm sure there are better sources for Tiobe comments, but I came across that one. (Note to self: look at Google Trends) People are saying things like "C++ is unimportant? Apparently, not according to the most recent TIOBE ratings."

Don't you think that indicates how people look at the data and that it's opinion forming? And:

"In this post, dragonchild said "The numbers he comes up with track very closely to what I would consider how those 20 languages are doing, living-wise [about a similar search engine study]....I would put forward that he has stumbled on a useful measure of a language [referring to my original study]....Note - living-ness and useful-ness are two mostly-unrelated concepts. But, I think that it is foolish to disregard either concept in favor of the other."

Which is about a different search engine study, but it shows that such studies influence opinions. -Barry- 20:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to search for links for you. Again, WP:V#Self-published_sources remain unacceptable. Steve p 20:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That rule doesn't apply, but I won't argue with you about it. Searching for links isn't necessary. I offered to do it myself, and the two I provided are enough, and common sense with no links is enough too. -Barry- 21:25, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The data is about popularity, but we can infer from that that it influences people's opinions considering how popular the website is, and I showed you dragonchild's opinion. Also, look at some of the things people are saying about the Tiobe data here (search for the parts where TIOBE is bold). I'm sure there are better sources for Tiobe comments, but I came across that one. (Note to self: look at Google Trends) People are saying things like "C++ is unimportant? Apparently, not according to the most recent TIOBE ratings." Tiobe's data is about Perl's popularity, as you said, and if it's decreasing, that's obviously bad, and if it's currently higher than other languages, that's good, and some people would obviously realize that, and I've provided actual opinions that can be found on the internet. I don't want to leave out stuff like this.

So, is there anyone who still doesn't believe that there are people who believe Perl might be on the decline because of the Tiobe data? I'll provide more comments from people if necessary. -Barry- 15:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The TIOBE data should be avoided if we have a verifyible data source, and we do. No comments on the effect of the TIOBE data is needed. Steve p 16:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

What makes book sale data more verifyable than search engine data that anyone can confirm with the search engines? Anyway, the data that belongs in the pro and con section is people's opinions, and I provided links to show people's opinions. There's your verification. Their opinions are based on Tiobe, which is why Tiobe is mentioned. -Barry- 17:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

-Barry-, book sale data is superior because statistical inferences can be drawn from it. Please re-read the section above for what is objectionable about the TIOBE data. Also, please refrain from moving my comments. Thanks! Steve p 19:04, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

It's the opinion section. Accuracy of the data that opinions are based on could be mentioned, but whether to include an opinion doesn't depend on it. I've said that several times. The popularity of the Tiobe page makes it noteworthy, along with the fact that people's opinions are based on it.

I disagree with this. The TIOBE page itself does not express an opinion of Perl, so reporting data from it in the Perl#Opinion section doesn't make sense, no matter how popular it is. Data from the TIOBE page could conceiveably be cited in the Perl#Opinion section, but that's different.

You argue that The TIOBE page is popular, so people are seeing it, so people base their opinions on it, so we can report those opinions in the Perl#Opinion section. I think that's a pretty tenuous chain of inferences. And if you follow the chain all the way to the end, all you have is an assertion that some unidentified group of people have some unknown or unstated opinion of Perl. That's just not definite enough to report in a Wikipedia article. Even if you did state what opinion it is that these people are supposed to hold, I'm not convinced that it is a noteworthy opinion. These are, by hypothesis, people who base their opinions on the TIOBE data. I'm prepared to dismiss their opinions in the same way that I dismiss those of people who base their opinions on their daily horoscope. Swmcd 17:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

And don't move comments unless it helps, and don't blame me for helping the readability of this article. We had the same conversation in two separate parts of this page and I fixed it. I was careful not to change the context. This will be going to arbitration. Make it easier on the arbitrators. -Barry- 19:45, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Statistical inferences can be drawn from the Tiobe data too, and the Tiobe data is cited in several journals and books. For example, chapter 4 of Transforming IT education: Promoting a culture of excellence says:

"Postgraduate students are generally aiming to extend their current skill set and diversify their employment options, and most likely want to acquire programming skills they can put into practice immediately. This factor directed the language selection towards one of the languages currently popular in the "real world". According to the TIOBE Programming COmmunity (TPC) Index (TIOBE Programming community index for March 2004, n.d.), the top three most popular languages currently in use, as at March 2004, are Java, C and C++. Java and C++ have both declined in their popularity over the last 12 months, whereas the use of C has slightly increased."

Somewhere on this page, Swmcd said that the opinion section entries should specifically mention that something's an opinion and not just show data and expect people to infer that it's opinion forming, so maybe what we currently have in the con section about Tiobe should be reworded from:

"On the less technical side, TIOBE claims with its search engine polling in May 2006 that Perl's popularity is at its lowest since June, 2001."

to something like:

"In some acedemic literature, TIOBE's search engine polling data is used to indicate popularity trends of programming languages. TIOBE's data indicates that as of May 2006, Perl's popularity was at its lowest since June, 2001."

With the appropriate footnotes. -Barry- 15:29, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

This still doesn't express an opinion of Perl. It reports a trend in academic literature, and it reports a trend in search engine results. Swmcd 17:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

It cites a publication in which the author obviously believes the Tiobe data indicates popularity. What do you want, a quote that specifically says "my opinion about Tiobe's Perl data is..."? -Barry- 17:31, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I want a quote that specifically says "my opinion of Perl is...". Swmcd 19:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, unless someone else has something to say, I have nothing more to say about this and this issue can be considered unresolvable. -Barry- 19:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that someone saying he believes the Tiobe data indicates popularity is, in fact, incorrect. An opinion is one thing, but this would be a clearly false statement, which is not a mere opinion. We would not put "Perl doesn't run on Windows" under the "Opinion" section, even if someone noteworthy "obviously believes" it to be true. Pudge 05:10, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

There is a problem with my proposal though. It needs to mention why the decreased popularity is a con. It's a con because, for example, it has consequences on the job market and the availability of Perl programmers, but the mediator reverted that. I think it's obvious enough that people would have that opinion about a language that's declining in popularity, and the popularity information shouldn't be included without it. -Barry- 18:02, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

jbolden1517, I am prepared to answer your original questions.

The problem is not whether Perl is more or less popular than it was in the past. It is about the quality of the data. I believe that I have provided -Barry- with data that passes the soundness test. Although Pudge and Scarpia disagree whether book sales are a valid measure of popularity, it is used by O'Reilly Media as a leading indicator for where the jobs will be. The TIOBE data is much lower quality due to its data source and its methods. Additionally, their objectiveness, as Scarpia has pointed out, can also be easily called into question. These factors make the TIOBE data unacceptible to all the editors involved other than -Barry-. -Barry- seems unwilling to compromise on this.
As Tim O'Reilly states, book sale data tends to be a leading indicator for it appearing in the workplace. The graph shows that Perl book sales have been hovering around 5% marketshare for quite some time. To me, this seems to point toward your second statement "The increase in Perl's usage has fallen off" although there do not appear to be citations either way.
Swmcd has argued that there should be a Perl#Popularity section. I have come to agree with him. My original point is that popularity is not either praise or criticism of a language. I originally compromised on adding popularity data to the page, but I still didn't feel Perl#Opinion was the right place. Swmcd has come up with the great idea of moving it to a Perl#Popularity section. -Barry-, however, seems unwilling to compromise on this.

Steve p 19:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no "although." Book sales are largely orthogonal to popularity, especially in regards to an established and largely unchanging language like Perl: I use nothing but Perl, and I have not bought a Perl book in years, and I am not alone in this, because the language simply does not need as many books as it used to, because it doesn't change very much. This is a fact. Whether someone like O'Reilly chooses to deny this fact has no bearing on this fact (if indeed O'Reilly does say this has a direct relationship with popularity). I am unwilling to compromise on pretending that some data says something that it cannot say. Unless you can come up with verifiable evidence that actually shows relative or absolute popularity, and you cannot, this is entirely useless. The fact that the data is verifiable is only half the equation: it also has to actually show popularity, and it does not. Pudge 00:18, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Since learning Perl, I've also learned some Python, some C, and even some Verilog. But I haven't bought a book on any of them. With things like Wikipedia available, there's really no need. -- RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib Reverts} 00:22, 5 June 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)

The Wikipedia article on a programming language is not its documentation. We don't need to explain how to do anything. Wikipedia is not a HOWTO. I don't see that its obvious that we need to include benchmarking information, or what purpose it would serve. We can include discussion about design trade-offs that gives insight into the architecture and inner-workings of the language, but simply throwing numbers around does not inform the reader. Scarpia 17:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Again. Let me just make sure I understand. You are arguing that knowing how fast a language is at various tasks is not important to be people considering / evaluating a language? jbolden1517 ^Talk 20:32, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

A language itself doesn't do anything at any speed, just as the english language doesn't tell a story or make a poem. People can write programs to do tasks, and we can time those programs. That's only timing the programs that somebody wrote, and the speed only measures that particular implementation. Another programmer (e.g. one with more skill) may write a program in the same language to do the same thing faster (and I've been on both sides of that many times, as have most practicing programmers probably). The execution speed, even if we could measure it, is only a tiny portion of the utility and reason to use a language, and to focus on it gives it undue importance. If everyone wanted really fast programs (i.e. cared about execution speed), they'd be programming in machine language. Since there are concerns more important to them (time to market, how much time they have, return on investment, total programmer time, portability, and so on), elevating a single concern to stand above all others adds bias, even if the numbers favor Perl.

It's not of particular importance to Perl specifically, but may be appropriate in an article about dynamic languages in general. I addressed some of these concerns in my last edits to the "Comparative Performance" section by relating the claims to the design of Perl and linking to two significant discussions of the impact of Perl's implementation to its performance.

Knowing how to benchmark something is certainly interesting to users, but as I said before, Wikipedia is not a HOWTO. Scarpia 22:12, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Benchmarking is an appropriate thing to consider when choosing a language. It is not appropriate, however, to provide benchmark results as they may not be at all relevant as a criticism to a programming language in all cases. There are too many variables to consider (differences in CPU, memory, file systems, bus speed, etc.) that make a single set of benchmark results unusable when not comparing identical system. Benchmark results involving Perl and other interpreted languages can also be slanted through differences in C compilers used to compile the interpreter, optimization levels, and other compiler options. Using benchmark comparisons between languages is also often a slanted argument. I'm sure most programmers will concede that Assembly Language is faster in almost every task than any other language. However, this would certainly be specious reasoning if you are using this alone to select a programming language or using it as a criticism against another language. I am highly suspect of adding benchmark information for any computer language as it can provide an editor a way to add a positive or negative point of view.

As for how to benchmark Perl, its not to much different than any other statistical experiment. Set up a base case with a measured level of expected error. Experiment with and measure an opposing case. If you cannot prove the opposing case is statically significant from the base, you cannot say that the opposing case is any different from the base. Knowing how to benchmark has little to do with Perl. It requires a basic understanding of statistical inference and an ability to be dispassionate about the results. Steve p 22:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

There's currently benchmark data for Perl here, and I think it would fit nicely in the Perl article. It's a fairly compact chart (three rows of data with no sideways scrolling on a 1024 x 768 screen). It compares Perl to six popular languages. About 16 tests are used for each value of speed, memory, and program size shown in the chart. Actually, 32 tests because two counts of tests won are included in each table cell, one for the Debian OS and one for Gentoo, separated by a slash. I think it's small enough to show here:

The following data comes from Debian : AMD™ Sempron™ benchmarks from from May 7, 2006 and Gentoo : Intel® Pentium® 4 benchmarks from May 10, 2006. The Debian and Gentoo tests used equivalent benchmarks, but on Gentoo, some benchmarks had a higher workload, most language implementations were built from source, and Size tests measured GZip bytes instead of lines of code.

Number of tests won (Debian : AMD™ Sempron™ / Gentoo : Intel® Pentium® 4)

Speed
Memory
Size

Perl	C (gcc)
1/1	12/15
0/1	13/15
11/14	2/2

Perl	C++ (g++)
0/2	14/12
0/0	14/14
10/14	4/0

Perl	Java JDK Server
3/3	13/13
12/12	4/4
13/16	2/0

Perl	PHP
9/8	4/6
10/10	3/5
10/11	3/4

Perl	Python
5/7	11/9
8/8	8/8
6/3	9/13

Perl	Ruby
14/14	2/2
10/9	6/7
8/2	6/14

Include all the disclaimers you want, but include the chart because it's meaningful. It's not available in such an easy to use form anywhere else. I created it from data taken from the source (mentioned above) especially for Perl comparisons. -Barry- 03:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

____

We are getting really off track

Scapia, benchmarks are as tandard features of language evaluation, how speed is measured. This is not some weird topic. If you want to argue why benchmarks shouldn't be used pick a different article (like benchmarks). Your opinion is well into the minority (and for good reason IMHO). I have no objection to a link like [1] next to the benchmark paragraph. I do have objections to pretending there are no speed differences between languages. People use languages like C specifically to get performance.

I'm not saying it's a weird topic. I'm saying that you don't benchmark languages. You benchmark programs. I'm not saying that there are no speed differences between languages, but I do know that people can easily write a slow programs or fast programs in any language. The Shootout link explicitly says this on it's first page. You can't use their data and throw away their disclaimer. Scarpia 04:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Benchmarks are more relevant to Perl than other dynamic languages since Perl has been optimized for performance, particularly in areas like Regexes
There is no evidence that Barry is acting in bad faith in including benchmarks
Barry - The particular chart you are choosing is not very good. Your source includes good relative comparisons win lose #s are nowhere near as good.
I think summary data is more important than that chart. We want information not data. So I would want a paragraph like "+/- 50% Perl performs on par with PHP on CGI. It on generally slower than Java for math computation by a factor of 2-4, though faster than other dynamic languages not specifically designed for math by abut 30%. In terms of Regex it outperforms or equals just about any engine out there. In terms of ..." or whatever. Obviously that's harder to get agreement on but that's information not data. We can link to the data. So no raw facts without interpretation

jbolden1517 ^Talk 03:59, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the results from those benchmarks are not verifiable. Interpreted languages are run by an interpreter that typically is a C program. Like all C programs, their performance can be greatly influenced by the optimizer flags used at compile time. On my 2.0 Ghz Celeron, there are significant differences in performance depending on the flags passed to Perl's Configure script prior to compiling. For my test, I ran the nsieve program. Since it appears that they run the tests once without averaging, I'm doing that as well.

Flags: -des -Doptimize="-g" Runtime: 0m36.757s
Flags: -des Runtime: 0m30.629s
Flags: -des -Doptimize="-O3" Runtime: 0m29.426s
Flags: -des -Doptimize="-O3 -ffast-math -funroll-loops" Runtime: 0m28.116s
Flags: -des -Dcc=/opt/intel/cc/9.0/bin/icc -Aoptimize="-xW" Runtime: 0m27.639s

Better still, Randal Schwartz wrote an article and provides an optimized version of the nsieve, which I adapted to provide additional runtime improvements.

Flags: -des -Dcc=/opt/intel/cc/9.0/bin/icc -Aoptimize="-xW" Runtime: 0m18.756s

So, unfortunately, without the information on the optimization flags for the various interpreted languages, the results are not verifiable or repeatible. In addition, there is no way to tell if the results are slanted in favor of one language over another either accidentially or not. As it appears that the gcc C programs are being compiled with various optimization flags, this may be the case. This threatens to add a POV to the article, and, as such, I am very much against any of it being added. Steve p 07:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Steve that is great data. And Perl specific. Put it somewhere else on the web and lets cite it. You may want to mention which of the above is the default i.e. the one likely to be encountered in practice). I'd also do things like average....

Now in terms of your argument, you are talking worst case about a factor of 2. Excluding the extreme cases you are talking a factor of 10%. Some of the differences in terms of comparison between languages are much larger than 2 and 10% is well within the ranges to make meaningful comparisons. I'm sure that's true of C programs as well, which means we can benchmark Perl modulo the problems we have benchmarking any program. Again I'm the mediator. I can't really defend benchmarks, since I'm not here to argue. You have to show something that is specifically true of benchmarking Perl scripts relative to scripts in other languages that's not true of any other pair otherwise you are arguing against benchmarks. jbolden1517 ^Talk 12:36, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I probably won't put them on the web or cite it on the Perl page. Per your request, I reran the nsieve benchmark with varying Configure flags. The benchmark program was run ten times and an average runtime and standard deviation were calculated.

-des -Doptimize="-g" - Average 38.7713s Std Dev. 2.48432222145196
-des - Average 29.5436s Std. Dev. 2.15090137177675
-des -Doptimize="-O3" - Average 28.2735s Std. Dev. 1.40536236924463
-des -Doptimize="-O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math -funroll-loops" - Average 26.6352 Std. Dev. 0.112951120204961

The follow conclusions can be made with a 95% degree of certainty:

Using -g as the optimize flag does not produce an outling result. Its average result could not have been produced by any of the other perl's compiled for this comparison.
Using -O3 did not produce significantly different results from using -O2 (the default). Using -O3, however, did produce more consistant results.
It cannot be ruled out that a perl compiled with the optimize flag with -O2 or -O3 can produce as good of results as compiling with "-O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math -funroll-loops". However, it can also be concluded that a perl compiled with "-O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math -funroll-loops" will produce better results than the average results of a perl compiled with -O2 or -O3.
The above show that differing compiler optimization flags do have significant impact on the performance of the compiled perl executable.

Now, as I've demonstrated, the benchmark results that User:-Barry- wants to link to are fundementally flawed. Without providing average results, standard deviations, or optimization flags used to compile the various interpreted languages, there is no way to verify the results or make meaningful comparisons. As a consensus of the editors have agreed, these results do not belong on the Perl page, and I would question their inclusion elsewhere. Steve p 21:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, you wanted to know the flags used to compile the interpreter. I don't know, but considering the number of different tests performed and the community and bug report system that's set up for the shootout site, and the site's popularity and lack of any other data remotely comparable, their results should definitely be linked to. I think my overall win/lose count is good too, but I won't fight over my particular chart much. If it's not used on Wikipedia, that will mean there won't be a duplicate content penalty when I post it elsewhere.

With the community for that shootout site, there's much more peer review than we could get from the behind-the-scenes original research you're doing, but if you have valid concerns, you can include them in the article. The Perl article simply can't ignore a such a major source of benchmark data that's accessible with a click. And it's linked to in four other articles.

Steve p: Also, when someone asks for advice on what language to use for a program that needs to be run fast, would you suggest that nobody answer unless they have all the details about the not-yet-written program and how the interpreter was compiled, etc? At least you wouldn't be wrong if you didn't answer, but the person with the question would just go to a different forum and get a much less accurate answer than the shootout site provides, and it would probably be a useful answer.-Barry- 01:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I would tell them they have more important things to worry about when selecting a language. Also, peer-review is irrelevant if what is allowed on the website can be controlled by a small group of individuals. The value of their peer-review is dubious when their C programs fail to compile. Finally, yes, there are four other languages mention the shootout. The Clean editors agree with the consensus of the Perl editors, when they wrote "Clean performs pretty well in the Computer Language Shootout Benchmarks - though the value of such benchmarks can be debated." Obviously, this is not a minority position. Steve p 15:21, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

It's much more a question of accuracy than POV, but "You can see the build commands and runtime commands on each program page in the build & benchmark results section." For example, the build commands for ackermann.gcc-3.gcc are here. -Barry- 11:45, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Without being verifiable, there is no way say whether the benchmark is neutral or not. Steve p 14:36, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Steve please feel free to cite an alternate source for benchmarks. Without a cite your criticisms fail WP:V#Verifiability.2C_not_truth. Most programmers believe in benchmarks, the shootout results are fairly representative. Your comments are very good research and if you post them to another cite I'll agree to link to them (as I've said) but I'm ruling that Barry is acting within WP:V with the concepts of benchmarks. The specific he wants is terrible but he's already agreed to write the summary paragraph. I know you believe the benchmarks are bad, but that would need to be the overwhelming position not a minority position for you to win this. An easier argument is to find a better site than shootout. Do you have one? jbolden1517 ^Talk 02:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Without a seconday cite, the shootout benchmarks would seem to fail WP:V#Self-published sources. Also, I don't see how it is a minority position when the creators of the shootout agree with what Scarpia said above. The shootout has entertainment value, but it is of limited value determining whether a specific language should be chosen over another. That is why the majority of editors and even yourself agreed what had been added was not appropriate for the Perl entry. Also, can you please explain why the Perl entry should be the how to benchmarking? Steve p 15:21, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

A self published source would be something like the Larry Wall putting out a benchmark. Shootout is 3rd party information. As for Perl and the how of benchmarking I think I was unclear since both you and Scarpia misunderstood me. In brief:

Information about benchmarking in general or problems with benchmarking in general belong in the benchmarking article
Information about benchmarking Perl that does not apply to other languages can be in the Perl article (or a separate "benchmarking Perl" article)
Information about benchmarking dynamic interpreted languages can be in the benchmarking article (or a separate article)
Specific details for Perl regarding information about benchmarking dynamic interpreted languages can be in the Perl article or a separate article.

And following the same chain of reasoning:

Any argument against Perl benchmarks that would apply to benchmarks of any dynamic interpreted language are invalid. This is the wrong level to deal with them. Even worse if the arguments apply to benchmarking of languages or benchmarking in general.

As for what was added (the chart) Barry has agreed not to include it. That part of mediation is done. I'm offering Barry or anyone else who wants to include benchmarking information the opportunity to include useful information. That failing nothing goes in. jbolden1517 ^Talk 00:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)</ref>

Great, then I'm happy with the Perl#Comparative_performance that Scarpia already added regarding benchmarking and performance. Steve p 17:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

If no one objects, I'll be adding the following to Perl#Miscellaneous

The Programming Language Shootout

This is identical to what D_programming_language#External_links has. It is devoid of any commentary on our part and allows visitors to the Perl page explore and examine the benchmarks and form their own opinions. Taking visitors to the beginning Shootout page also gives them all of the Shootout authors' disclaimers.

I realize that we all have very differing opinions on the value of the data at the Shootout site. My hope is that including the most neutral manner possible can help us to form a consensus that ends this portion of the mediation. Steve p 00:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Barry you OK with that? Does it close the issue out? jbolden1517 ^Talk 00:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd still want benchmarks mentioned in the Comparative performance section and I'd want a link to the shootout page either in the section or in a footnote referenced in the section. That's is how it currently is. If you want to add it to Miscellaneous too, there should be a description that mentions that the site contains benchmarks.

If I was as motivated to fix up the article as I was a few weeks ago, I'd say the link should only be in the Comparative performance section, and I'd try to eliminate the Miscellaneous section from the too crowded External links section, but without my chart, and without my wording, and with the extra footnotes requiring more bouncing around, etc., I don't have the same level of interest in making the article as good as possible.

Steve p says he's happy with the Comparative performance section, but jbolden says certain other data is ok. I need more time to look it over and decide whether there's something I want to add, so don't close this issue yet. -Barry- 04:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I still believe the chart should be in the article because it's a much better indicator of speed, memory consumption, and program size for Perl than the information people get about those things on every Perl message board, newsgroup, etc. I agree, under protest, to keep it out of the Perl article, but if this goes to arbitration for other reasons, I'll make it an issue. -Barry- 18:34, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Scarpia's latest reversions

Beginning here Scarpia made horrible reversions without discussing them here first. He's made equally horrible, biased reversions numerous times in the past.

He claimed a company is biased for adding more search engines to make the tests more accurate. The company saw a huge shift in the results for Java's popularity one month, which didn't make sense, so they wanted to use more than Google for the results. You can't say they just wanted their favorite language to appear more popular. Is it even legal to make such a claim? On Wikipedia?

He deleted evidence of Perl's declining popularity instead of adding the opposing evidence he claims exists. Isn't there a guideline saying you shouldn't do that?

He claimed you can use PPM to install pre-compiled modules, but PPM doesn't work for all modules. He should have adjusted the wording to mention that sometimes PPM can help. I remember several times I needed a C compiler for a module, and me and someone much more experienced had a very hard time figuring out how to use it and got very little useful help. It's documented on Perlmonks. (Discuss here)

With the new section I added, about more links that I want in the article, it will be even harder to get people like Scarpia to abide by mediated decisions. This has to be taken to the next level. There's no reason to waste our time here unless there's something done about Scarpia. -Barry- 06:07, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone believe this is accurate: "Tiobe clearly shows its bias when it changes it methodology when it looks like Java, the language they commercially support, appears to drop in popularity" considering that the methodology change was to gather more data, which makes the tests more accurate overall, and considering that Java's drop in popularity was drastic and appears to be a change in Google's ranking rather than actual popularity loss? And if not, why hasn't that been reverted? I mentioned it a couple of times already (that I want it reverted).

If the data is meaningless, more of it won't help. Swmcd 18:10, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I offered to remove all TIOBE references from the page in the compromise above. Care to reconsider? Steve p 19:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Tiobe will be notified of this and pointed to WP:LIBEL if that edit stays. -Barry- 17:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll be happy to revert it. I don't think it belongs in the Opinion section in the first place. Swmcd 18:10, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

-Barry, you are treading on Wikipedia:No_legal_threats. Steve p 19:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The point was that it wasn't an accurate statement that Scarpia added. It was libelous. Thanks for deleting it though. -Barry- 19:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

It's still there, in the Opinion section. "However, TIOBE clearly shows its bias when it changes it methodology when it looks like Java, the language they commercially support, appears to drop in popularity." Never mind though. You've both made your point. Mine too. -Barry- 19:45, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I removed the TIOBE data from Perl#Pro. I realize that there is not yet consensus on this. At this point, all I ask is that if that material is returned to the page, it not be spliced into the middle of an existing sentence (or paragraph). Anything added to Perl#Opinion needs to stand on its own as reporting a notable opinion of Perl. Swmcd 02:04, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Module limitations

The popularity issue is discussed in another section, and the claim of bias about Tiobe has been reverted, as it should be. The reversion of the module information can be discussed in this subsection. The text that Scarpia reverted was:

Users without a C compiler are also limited to pure Perl modules if they wish to add to the module library that comes with Perl. There's free software that can enable these users to install C modules, however it tends to be poorly documented, especially for beginners.

I've moved previous discussion about this to this section, below. -Barry- 20:59, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

-Barry-, I added the note regarding PPMs here, but I don't understand why I would need to discuss the changes here. All Scarpia did was clean it up a bit. I didn't think that qualifying it with "some" or "many" was necessary and I wanted to avoid weasel words, so I cannot see where "...provides packages of pre-compiled Perl modules, called PPMs, for use with their ActivePerl." implies "all". Similar discussions have occured on other talk pages regarding "some" or "many", but the consensus I've seen is to remove the qualifications, and let the readers decide on their own.

Also, I've been using Perl on Win32 and compiled my own modules for quite a long time. If you still have any questions, please feel free to add it to my talk page. Steve p 12:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't complaining about you. The PPM issue is about [this], where Scarpia deleted "Users without a C compiler are also limited to pure Perl modules if..." Thanks for the offer of help, but I needed it back in 2004. See Free MSVC tools + Activestate to compile CPAN Modules by jZed. Look at the "Here's how" part. If those instructions, on Perlmonks, are necessary, then there's a documentation problem somewhere, and it still doesn't work with all modules. Look at the rest of the thread too. It brings back memories of what I discovered on my own back then. I ended up not doing it, then I complained and someone on Perlmonks told me that I really should learn C if I want to use those tools. Audrey Tang told me this, but I don't need it anymore, and I'm not even sure there's documentation for it.

Anyway, Scarpia should have discussed some of his changes here, especially this one, which we've been discussing. -Barry- 15:55, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Compiling Perl with the free MSVC tools was not straightforward when they were released. Microsoft introduced a subtle change in the free MSVC tools that caught the core developers off guard. They've since been fixed through a change in compiler flags. Also, Microsoft doesn't clearly mention that the free MSVC is almost useless without downloading the Windows SDK. The bigger issue has been with the Microsoft MSDN website. Broken links have been a regular issue. The Perl install information for Win32 platforms removed the links which were regularly broken, and replaced it with more generic information on where users should look for these compilers. As far as C knowledge being needed, its not. Steve p 19:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I had no clue where to start, so I never had the chance to experience the flag problem. MS not mentioning SDK is one of the documentation problems that justifies my comment (which was reverted) about bad documentation. Broken links weren't a problem for me. Replacing the links with generic information might have been a problem for me if it made the documentation bad. Bottom line: I'd revert Scarpia's deletions of my material and ban him from editing if I could. -Barry- 20:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedians with articles

[content deleted I see nothing but attacks in this whole section. Now this seems to involve another article so I'm going to consider it out of scope for now. I've got enough problems on Perl to worry about. jbolden1517 ^Talk 23:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this is allowed, but here's a link to the section as it was before it was removed. -Barry- 17:33, 2 June 2006 (UTC)