Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eastgate Systems

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

The result was keep. I do, however, warn that incivility and personal attacks (irrespective of who said it or whether any were said) will be met with our full power of dissuasion from doing so. Kurykh 00:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Eastgate Systems

Eastgate Systems (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

non notable publisher. completely unsourced. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 19:45, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

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• Established in 1982, Eastgate has published many of the key works in new media. They've been reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and most other major newspapers. They're regularly taught at dozens of universities throughout the world. The nomination for deletion comes out of the blue, without discussion and without making any effort to improve or extend the article. Keep. MarkBernstein 23:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not incumbent on me to improve the article, it's incumbent on the creator to make it sourced and verifiable. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 01:45, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep Despite the undeveloped state of the article, Eastgate was important in the deveopment of pre-web hypertext. The nominator claims no expertise in the history of hypertext pre-web. Since he is a legal intern for Wikimedia, I refer him to Mike Godwin, Wikimedia's current legal counsel, who in around 1995 thought that Eastgate style hypertext was sufficiently interesting to invite me to demo it to a class he was teaching at the time on New Media. --Pleasantville 23:35, 12 August 2007 (UTC) aka Kathryn Cramer

• Comment It should be noted that the above editor has a close relationship with Eastgate Systems. Secondly, Mike Godwin, nor myself or my position have a thing to do with this deletion debate. I should note that the above editor has provided absolutely no actual rationale for keeping, nor any sources for the article, nor any evidence of notability, other than WP:ILIKEIT, and a fallacious appeal to authority. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 01:42, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand how you can initiate a deletion debate and comment upon it and have nothing to do with it. Please explain. OF COURSE I have a relationship with Eastgate -- I say so. Do you know anything about this subject, i.e. pre-web hypertext? --Pleasantville 01:52, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I do not need to. No special knowledge is needed to edit wikipedia ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 02:13, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

No more damning comment could be adduced by wikipedia's enemies than "no special knowledge is needed" to excise articles from wikipedia. To a reader of scholarly or inqusiitive mind, no further edit or discussion of notability is required, as any discussion of the history of literary hypertext or hypertext fiction will establish the facts. To intelligent readers, I commend Robert Coover's familiar NYTBR essays (1993, 1994), George P. Landow's HYPERTEXT: THE CONVERGENCE OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY AND TECHNOLOGY (Johns Hopkins Press, now in its 3rd edition), Michael Joyce OF TWO MINDS, J. Yellowlees Douglas' THE END OF BOOKS, Chris Funkhouser's brand-new PREHISTORIC DIGITAL POETRY (University of Alabama Press, 2007), Kate Hayles's WRITING MACHINES (MIT, 2005), or indeed just about any book, monograph, or essay on the history of hypertext fiction and new media in the past 20 years.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by MarkBernstein (talk • contribs).

This article is not about hypertext. Establishing the notability of hypertext has nothing to do with the complete lack of verifiability or notability in this article.⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 03:52, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Mark's comment was towards establishing the notability of Eastgate in the hypertext field, please read what he actually wrote. It assumes for the sake of argument that it is not necessary to establish the notability of hypertext itself, which you yourself note is appropriate. 203.30.247.18 07:50, 13 August 2007 (UTC) .. (oops, forgot to log in first)

• Keep - the company is notable, even if the page does not currently reflect that. What is needed is more content towards that end. Calling for it's deletion isn't the way to do that, surely? It has not been sufficiently established that Eastgate is non-notable, only that you don't have any special knowledge on the matter -- absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That said, the page does need content supporting Eastgate's notability. Ericscheid 08:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

If you dislike Wikipedia's "anyone can edit" policies, you need not stay here. Citizendium is that way. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 03:53, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep if documented If the books cited do talk about this publisher in a substantial way, then they would be sufficient to show notability. Mark, could you supply page numbers? DGG (talk) 04:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Keep - I'm not really sure why this debate is happening. Wikipedia policy states 'This page in a nutshell: Material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source.' Picking through the page I can't see it is any different to the Springer_Verlag entry. It's also the case that the academic community centred around ACM SIGWEB / and Web research in general, without doubt see Eastgate as a notable publisher. --Siharper 08:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC) — Siharper (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• SPA account: Account was created today, and has 4 contributions, 3 of which are to this AFD. This account is likely to be an SPA or a sockpuppet. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 12:37, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

The above-mentioned edit was signed by Simon Harper. Professor Simon Harper is a Lecturer in the Information Management Group of the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, and is the conference chairman of the ACM Hypertext Conference 2007, to be held at the Manchester Museum in September 2007. http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~sharper/ provides contact information and a CV. Harper is a familiar name to any researcher in the field. MarkBernstein MarkBernstein 13:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Denny Dan, you're being rude. Why is it that anyone with expertise in this area who cares about the subject should be presumed to already be a member of wikipedia? It would be more polite to ask for further information about the person commenting than to make unwarranted accusations. Please assume good faith.

Your invitation that we all leave and go to Citizendium is also a breach of appropriate decorum, and seems to me to constitute a deliberate and intentional attempts to disrupt the usability of Wikipedia for its editors. --Pleasantville 13:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

. . . and please don't edit my request for civility. I was unaware Denny wasn't your name when I called you that. --Pleasantville 20:53, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• strong keep notable, in fact very clearly changed the world with storyspace and tinderbox. that they are a leading publisher hypertext fiction should not be dismissed lightly either. the lack of verifiability is moot, as the knowledge documented there is widely known. oh... and if you wanted the article improved, then you should have marked it for improvement. if you want verifiable then mark it as such for a few months first and contact its prior editors. AFD is not an improvement process. --Buridan 13:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep - anybody familiar with the field knows about the notability of the company. Buridan, you and I both know this stuff, but under Wikipedia's verifiability standards (which are not optional), somebody ought to dig out the texts cited above and get some page numbers to satisfy the issues raised; you're right, though, about improvement tagging rather than AfD nomination. Swat, you ought to catch your breath and reread the essays about civility in the Wikipedia project; your vendetta against all matters related to certain people is really reaching unreasonable levels and damaging the interests of this project, which is bigger than you. --Orange Mike 13:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

There was a segment on Eastgate style hypertext on the show Imprint (TV series) circa 1995 which the flew me to Canada for. I'll see if I can dig out the reference. I'm sure Mark has a general bibliography somewhere, but the Imprint show may not be on it. --Pleasantville 14:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep. Clearly notable. Sourcing could be better, but sources are given. For events that predate the Web, you cannot really expect clickable links for all sources. --Stephan Schulz 14:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep sourcing seems to exist [1] and some are cited already. Do we have to go to Citizendium to have articles like this now? --W.marsh 16:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per above. Seems like yet another of many examples of an AFD where article research and improvement would have been more helpful. -Harmil 17:09, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Clearly passes WP:N at this point. dissolve^talk 20:08, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. GreenJoe 21:34, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Huh? What's "per norm" supposed to mean? --Pleasantville 18:55, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

That's "per nom": roughly, 'in concurrence with the reasoning offered by the original nominator' (or 'in the original nomination'). --Orange Mike 23:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Orangemike, the article is now copiously sourced, including several references indicating notability (see, for example, the footnote I just added quoting Robert Coover in the New York Times Book Review). Do you still feel it should be deleted? --Jd4v15 01:08, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Orangemike was just answering my question. GreenJoe is the only one who's voted with the nominator so far. --Pleasantville 01:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Oops, you're right. My apologies for the confusion. GreenJoe, if you're around, would you care to comment? --Jd4v15 06:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. As noted above, clearly passes WP:N, and seems to have gained cites. Not sure why it was ever tagged for deletion instead of expansion; although the former clearly does have the effect of forcing folks to flesh out article, it's not worth the bad blood it creates. --Yendi 00:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. For reasons given above. Agree with Yendi, this should not have been marked for deletion. In general, as much damage is done to Wikipedia by uninformed editors assuming subjects are not noticable as is done by people trying to insert vanity pages. If you don;t know about it, give it the benefit of the doubt and.or ask other editors for advice.--Martin Wisse 06:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep Clearly notable (as Swatjester would have realized if he'd bothered to Google Eastgate first) and currently sourced. --Jd4v15 07:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep The article looks decently sourced (while a bit rough on the edges) and the outward hostility in this debate suggests this to be rather a personal than an issues debate anyway. The company and its activity (or, especially those) are definitely notable Wefa 02:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Seems to be notable and historically important. *Dan T.* 22:53, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. I'm an associate professor of digital culture at the University of Bergen in Norway, where I teach hypertext literature, blogging and new media studies. Eastgate is an extremely important part of hypertext history, and is obviously notable. As far as I can see, the only argument for deletion is that it's not seen as notable by a person who admits to having no expertise in the field of electronic literature or hypertext history, and that it wasn't sufficiently sourced. Everybody else in this discussion argues that it IS notable. Surely the thing to do is to improve the article rather than deleting it?--Lijil 08:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

• • comment - bluntly, the real reason for the nomination seems to be that one editor feels that all articles about anything associated with a certain person are merely advertisements for her and her interests, and must be purged; and anyone who defends such matters is just part of her posse coming to her defense. Since Eastgate is linked to her, therefore it must not be notable. --Orange Mike 14:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Orange Mike, a small clarification: It's not just an editor being petty and unreasonable here; it's an administrator and WP intern. That makes the actions taken by him a lot less excusable. --Yendi 18:32, 17 August 2007.

(UTC) No personal attacks please. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 20:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Please do not make ridiculous assertions like that. When I made this nomination it had substantially less sources than it does now. ⇒ SWATJester ^{Denny Crane.} 20:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Hardly a personal attack: Yendi and OrangeMike are criticizing your role in instigating this regrettable situation. MarkBernstein 21:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Hardly a ridiculous assertion; that you're an admin and an intern are facts. And a lack of sourcing should, initially, be a call for an article to be expanded (thus the stub tag). Further, striking out what you disagree with is only slightly less conductive to debate than blanking it out. --Yendi 22:04, 17 August 2007 (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.