Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparision of desktop search software

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 Delete. The deletion rationale, that this is synthesis writing, combined with the lack of reliable independent sources, outweigh the only given keep rationale of other lists exist." The other comparisons/lists could just as easily be nominated for deletion if necessary. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 16:33, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comparision of desktop search software

Comparision of desktop search software (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Original proposed deletion was contested, however I feel that the original issues still pertain: "A personal essay in the guise of an article. Because only a limited number of software packages are covered, this ends up being just the author's own personal opinions - unless there is comprehensive coverage based on published sources, this is not suitable content for a Wikipedia article. Perhaps should be userfied?

In the author's words (from the article talk page): "It is impossible for a user to make a comprehensive review of dozens of tools... this is a wiki, give time (and that isn't 5 days) for other users to contribute as well. It's no one's personal opinion, this is information available at the author's website and mailing list. The external links are 3rd party information. They do not conform to your "references or sources" (according to your specification of references and sources) because there aren't any! Be pragmatic here. There are no published articles in ACM or IEEE or any other place!"

The author is admitting that there are no sources for this and it is unlikely that there will be any. The article is inherently unverifiable and cannot be rewritten from a neutral point of view because there are no external reliable sources to be found. Gwernol 19:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Everything about such an article is inherently POV: the evaluation criteria, which software to include and which software not to include, and, of course, the evaluation itself. By its very nature unfit for an encyclopedia. --Blanchardb-^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}-timed 20:12, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Can you suggest other evaluation criterias? Can you find the type of information stated there about other desktop search software? I targeted technical aspects there. Did you prefere a table with a single row with "searches text"... now that wouldn't be very helpfull would it. There is still a lot to be done, for example, which file types and application data each crawler indexes... But I can't do that all by myself. The only thing here that is POV are the tools listed in the comparison, but please, don't let it deter you from adding the missing ones. The.real.monkey.d.luffy (talk) 10:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
    • No, I cannot suggest other evaluation criteria, since by doing so I would be introducing a comparison that is just as non-neutral as the one that's already there. You stated on the talk page, There are no published articles in ACM or IEEE or any other place!, which is by itself a good reason why there should not be an article about this on Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is the original publisher of such a synthesis, that would violate its policy, WP:SYN. --Blanchardb-^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}-timed 11:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

• As suggested by Gwernol on the talk page, I'll quote myself: "I support leaving this article here to be further improved and worked upon. Something like this will definitely come in handy once it gets a bit more elaborate and has a larger overview with perhaps closed sourced applications added as well." Perhaps give the article some time to be corrected and for sources to be "verified". From the look of his e-mails, seems like author is interested in improvement. I'm not a Wikipedia-smart person, so maybe there's a week/two week period before deleting articles anyway. Andrz (talk) 00:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC).

There is a one week period while this discussion will continue. If proper published, independent sources can be located to support the article, then it will be kept. Remember the sources need to show not just that these particular products exist, but also contain these specific comparisons. Thanks, Gwernol 00:45, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

• • • Please give me one or two examples of such sources. The information stated in each table was provided by the developers or their site and mailing list. The only two sources I could find with comparisons about these products are not considered valid to you. I reiterate that there aren't any wikipedia-style-reliable-sources... at least I couldn't find any, but if somebody does, please tell me. BTW, please take a look at Google Desktop, where are the "reliable" 3rd party sources there? Take a look at Microsoft Word as well, there are several "citation needed" and the references there are to microsoft itself or seem to be plain offtopic.... O_O Can't the article exist while being tagged as unsorced? Because there are others like that. IMO deleting this one would be unfair. The.real.monkey.d.luffy (talk) 10:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

• An example of such a source would be if a reliable, independent magazine - PCMagazine, or MacWorld or similar - published a comparison of desktop publishing software. They would have done the work of choosing which products to compare, which attribute to compare them by and how to rank them. The problem with the current article is you have made the choice on which attributes to compare and which products to include. Wikipedia only reports the results of previously published work, so unless there is such a source we don't publish. The Microsoft Word article has two published books to support it, so while it may not be perfect (as you say it has citation needed tags) it at least has some basis for inclusion. The Google Desktop article does need improvement, but there is no doubt that reliable sources exist - I can think of a number of published reviews of it. I appreciate that this is demoralizing when your first effort is rejected. Please don't take this personally, this is not a reflection on you or your work. Its just unfortunate that you choose to create an article that falls outside the bounds of what Wikipedia is. Don't let this discourage you. A good place to start is to work on an existing article - maybe you'd like to add some of the sources that would improve Microsoft Word or Google Desktop? Once you get the hang of how things work, then you can move on to create articles of your own from sources. I certainly appreciate the effort you put into this one, and I believe you have a lot to give Wikipedia. Good luck, Gwernol 12:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

• The problem is that this is a gray area for wikipedia. It's too technical and non-mainstream to appear in PCMagazine or MacWorld, but it's also too non-scientific to be published in a scientific journal. Although there are possibly other sites or magazines where this could appear... they would not be considered as "independent" or "reliable". Even though the irony is present on the so-called "reliable sources" when they present the product of a powerfull company. The.real.monkey.d.luffy (talk) 21:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

• Delete Seems like OR by synthesis to me. Resolute 06:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
  • This is no original research. I assembled the facts provided by the authors or their webpages and mailing lists. The.real.monkey.d.luffy (talk) 10:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• Really... this is a huge demoter for contributing.... I'm assembling extremely technical information provided by the software authors, but people here want me to give them a reference of an article published in ACM or IIIE or Elsevier. Are people here really in favor or sharing information? And off course I would love to have information of every desktop search software, that would be great.... The problem is that such information isn't there and I'm not omniscient either... This type of information has to be stiched together from each tool. I believe Rome wasn't built in one day as well. The.real.monkey.d.luffy (talk) 10:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• How is this any different than the hundreds of other "comparison of ..." lists on wikipedia? Are they all candidates for deletion? --20after4 (talk) 20:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It depends entirely on if they are based on sourced comparisons or not. Which particular comparison lists were you thinking of? Gwernol 20:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

This article does appear to have at least a few credible sources. Perhaps the scope needs to be changed to "Comparison of open source desktop search engines" since it lacks information on commercial alternatives. I think that would be a better solution as apposed to deleting the article completely. As an example of another comparison list that has fewer listed sources: Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks however, this google search pulled a really long list of them: [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 20after4 (talk • contribs) 20:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

• An example of a comparison article with invalid references (i.e. in the wikipedian sense) is Comparison_of_container_formats. Another comparison article with almost no sources whatsoever is Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients. And none of these is marked for deletion. The irony of 2nd class articles (i.e. unsourced, to be deleted, etc) is that they are usually very valuable to some people, and the reason why they are unsourced is due to the scarcity of available information... which is what wikipedia tries to provide. I think the "unsourced" badge is a eye opener for everyone that consults wikipedia. The.real.monkey.d.luffy (talk) 21:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

• It may not have been included before but the article now links to [2] which seems to be a very relevant source for information on this subject. --20after4 (talk) 21:38, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

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.