Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of Direct3D and OpenGL

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. W.marsh 00:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison of Direct3D and OpenGL

This article is original research, since there are no primary sources on the topic of "Comparison of Direct3D and OpenGL". If there is a primary source on this topic, please cite it, and write an encyclopedic description of the topic, but do not actually treat Wikipedia as a primary source. See WP:NOT. Flayked 20:34, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Replying to myself here: If this article is to stay, it must not be a comparison of these two things. Instead, it must be a description of the comparison; e.g. what a comparison involves, how this particular comparison differs from other comparisons, etc. Actual comparison articles belong either in external links, references, and/or other Wikis, not Wikipedia itself. Flayked 21:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
  • keep. I think this is a useful article.
  • keep. This topic is an important issue for graphics programmers. Due to the nature of its subject, there are going to be few paper-published articles on it; most of this is borne out in newsgroups and the like. Most articles that could be linked to will only compare the two in terms of a particular feature, rather than as a comprehensive overview, and also most of them will be considerably POV. This article is an attempt to introduce an overview of the topic, and when I first came upon it I was impressed at how NPOV is actually managed to be. To summarize, I am saying that there may not be primary sources to draw from, but the information presented here is not a single person's original research; it is a collection of commentary from a variety of incomplete sources, and for being that is has value to wikipedia. (Flayked: What other wiki should this belong to?) - Rainwarrior 01:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure that a "collection of commentary from a variety of incomplete sources" is really Wikipedia's goal. However, since the consensus seems to be to keep the article, then I will stand by your decision. As for a suitable Wiki for non-encyclopedic material, see "Further reading" under Wikipedia:NOR. 4.242.147.193 (Flayked, forgot to sign in :() 22:11, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
  • keep as per Rainwarrior - Rangek 03:04, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep as per above, but rename to Features list of Direct3D and OpenGL Scented Guano 05:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Maybe we should merge it with the 3D computer graphics or similar article and clean it up there. IMO that would be an improvement over the current situation. Flayked 22:15, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
  • delete. Although the API wars has greatly calmed down, reworking this article to reflect real facts would probably need more effort than starting it from scratch, which should be encouraged. I have some doubts on the usefulness of this comparison and defining what to compare seems to be non-trivial to me: many points shall be taken in consideration with context-specific issues. MaxDZ8 talk 09:10, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Apples vs. Pears, No need to have an article comparing two API's. Lets leave that to GD.net/Gamesutra. --Mincetro 12:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • keep per Rainwarrior, and per thinking I don't understand how Flayked's suggestion doesn't wind up making the article less useful, as a description of possible comparisons instead of showing what the actual differences are. Perhaps it would help if the contribs could link to the references used. Also, we have articles comparing OSes and such, and those (to me at least) are useful. SterlingNorth 17:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • keep. Flayked's objection seems to be to the article title, not the contents - that it implies an article about the act of comparing Direct3D and OpenGL, rather than an article which itself does so. I doubt that this is a likely source of genuine confusion (articles on the subject of the act of comparing Direct3D with OpenGL are likely to be dull and not useful to anyone). Maybe "Differences between Direct3D and OpenGL" would be less ambiguous, but also less accurate, since the article mentions similarities as well as differences (the "features list" suggestion is equally inaccurate, since it's far from mentioning most of the features of either API); I'd be happy with a title change if a genuinely better title can be conceived, but most obvious changes seem to have problems of their own. This article does not perform research on the APIs in question - there are no novel timing measurements, no proposed changes, and no suggestions about circumstances in which either API might be superior; it merely provides a summary of some publicly known differences and similarities between them, and does so in a commendably unbiased manner - as Rainwarrior says. It's hard to quote public knowledge as a verifiable source, but nobody could interpret this page as a research paper. MaxDZ8: The article is no more or less exhaustive on the subject than other Wikipedia pages; there's more to say, but that's usually the case. The lack of bias distinguishes this from most other treatments, and is fitting with its place in Wikipedia; it is of value over comparisons elsewhere. Removing a useful article, named sensibly at least for search criteria (even if slightly ambiguously as a title), just because of its name would be detrimental. I was looking for specific information on how something was handled in OpenGL when I knew how it was handled in DirectX, and the fact that I found this page (via Google) and that it was useful is a recommendation in itself. Fluppeteer 17:44, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
    • I wonder if this isn't merely an example of the difference between Wikipedia and a real encyclopedia. Obviously, real encyclopedias do not have "Comparison of ..." pages, but perhaps this is something that Wikipedia should pursue. I personally don't find the idea very encyclopedic or useful (if I wanted to know the similarites/differences of two items, I would look each one up, or use a different book, and not expect the encyclopedia to have a comparison page for everything that might conceivably be comparable). Flayked 22:23, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The consensus so far seems to be "keep", so unless anyone else speaks up within a day or two, I will move the deletion notice per the Wikipedia Deletion guidelines. Flayked 22:23, 24 June 2006 (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.