Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/NoteEdit

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. Independent sourcing noted. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:42, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] NoteEdit

NoteEdit (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

non-notable software - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 12:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

• Weak/Neutral there appears to be some RS coverage, unfortunately I can't read the last two to know what they are. The two Italian business links have me leaning toward a weak keep. Would like to know more about the German sources. TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 16:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: 4 Ghits, really? Hardly evidence of any notability. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 16:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Response like I said, weak. To be fair, that's news hits, ghits actually abound for downloads, forums and what not. There's been some coverage of the software -- would love to know just what the German one says. This isn't a firm in either direction. TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 16:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 23:23, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Davewild (talk) 19:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

• Delete No assertation of notability. I can sort of read German, and from what I can decipher of those two German sources, neither is substantial in coverage. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 19:49, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
• Comment. There is a review of NoteEdit at the Linux Journal. TheslB (talk) 04:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

  My suggestion is to keep. Just barely notable. Otherwise, merge to GNU LilyPond. TheslB (talk) 04:45, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. Over the last few months, I've watched with dismay as the wikipedia articles for several pieces of software that I use have been deleted, for no reason other than a few random people deciding that the software isn't notable. These articles are very useful to many people such as myself (e.g. I didn't know about NtEd until a few minutes ago when I read this article), and no purpose is served by deleting them -- it's not like wikipedia is running out of space. This proposed deletion is particularly stupid: NoteEdit (it's sad to say) is currently the best graphical score editor that runs on Linux! How is that not noteworthy? So I'd like to make a personal plea: don't destroy all the useful work that's gone into this article, and others. Wikipedia has the potential to be an excellent repository of information about software (and free software in particluar), provided overzealous admins can be persuaded not to delete software *they* don't think notable. Finally, I'd like to encourage anyone reading this to undelete the Canorus article (or write a better one) -- Canorus will eventually replace NoteEdit. 71.132.158.69 (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
• Please keep this article, if for no other reason that NoteEdit is free and provides an interchange mechanism for importing and exporting a large number of different music formats. As such, it provides a repository of music notation knowledge that might not exist elsewhere. Rmkeller (talk) 19:21, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
• Weak Keep - there are some secondary sources. --Captain-tucker (talk) 01:35, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• Please keep this article. The history of development of NoteEdit / NtEd / Denemo / LilyPond / Canorus is, I suggest, already time-consuming to collect from other sources. Google hits are, as for other Free / Open Source Software (FOSS), a very weak metric of notability, an assessment is better conducted by specialists in the field. Although NoteEdit development has stopped, the codebase forms the basis of the active Canorus project and as such this article is a valuable reference for the project's history.

Although I do not wish to see Wikipedia's very high signal-to-noise ratio reduced by unnecessary clutter, this is an informative article; the only one of the WP:DEL guidelines that seems remotely applicable is WP:N. I request that this article be kept until there is greater clarity on Wikipedia WP:N guidelines relating to software, and specifically to FOSS.

I've proposed that specific notability criteria should be applied to deletions of software articles on notability grounds and request that deletion / flagging as AfD of such articles be suspended until a consensus on an acceptable process is reached. ThomasNichols (talk) 14:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Linux Journal has much praise for the software. [1] I suggest that this qualifies as notable enough for a WP article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aylad (talk • contribs) 16:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to sign my post. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 16:28, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Delete backbone of article is copyvio of project home page, no cited independent sources (those who advocate keeping the article should put some in the article, not here!), undue emphasis on the development team (the article should be centered on the subject itself, not the unrelated future plans of one or more of the team), and virtually nothing on what NoteEdit actually is. Fails WP:N and WP:V because of lack of reliable sources demonstrating actual notability. WP:ILIKEIT, which seems to be implied above, is not a valid "keep" justification. B.Wind (talk) 04:13, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

• In support of my request to Keep - it seems there may be issues relating to definition of notability for FOSS projects. the "no cited independent sources" and RS criteria are extremely difficult for many FOSS projects to meet as long as definitions of notability are based upon publication in academic journals or mainstream publications; as noted by HatlessAtless in the WP:N talk page, consensus also contributes to "notability". For FOSS, this may be reflected on digg.com or Technorati as blog popularity, neither of which are currently acceptable measures of notability under current WP:N guidelines.

According to WP:N, we should consider for deletion articles "whose subject fails to meet the relevant notability guideline" (emphasis added). Thus, notability may be shown by the content of the article, but equally to those familiar with the field the notability of the subject may be plain. By analogy, a very badly written and incomplete article on Thomas Jefferson would, I suggest, be unlikely to be flagged for deletion, since the notability of the subject is self-evident to those with any training in American history. Without such training (or in this case, without familiarity with FOSS development dynamics and the history of Linux music notation software) it could be considered to be just a personal family history page of the Jefferson family and appropriate for deletion.

Specifically addressing comments by B.Wind:

This cannot, I believe, be copyvio since a) there is no copyright in the HTML source of the NoteEdit homepage, and b) the software itself is issued under GPL. Furthermore, the article includes:

Although NoteEdit is still maintained, some of the current developers have started a new project, Canorus, to replace it, since the NoteEdit source code has certain limitations that make it difficult to maintain and improve. The original author Jörg Anders has also started a new WYSIWYG GTK+ musical score editor for Linux called NtEd.

This is exactly the sort of cross-project information for which Wikipedia articles are so valuable to the FOSS community. This is not just a copy of the home page.

"unrelated future plans" : much of the FOSS community is very alert to such plans. The original NoteEdit developer reportedly ceased development at least in part because of an unsubstantiated suggestion that the commercial Sibelius program, a competitor, was to release a Linux version. Although this subsequently proved inaccurate, it indicates that notes about future plans have direct relevance in such an article.

B.Wind: do you feel that there is an argument for removing articles which are of interest predominantly to FOSS developers? If so, I'd suggest that this should definitely be discussed on the WP:N talk page

Further discussion of 'cited independent sources' WP:RS and WP:V I will defer to the WP:N talk page, since I think it a more general issue, not solely relevant to this article.

WP:ILIKEIT is a valid justification neither for keeping any article, whether about FOSS or anything else, nor for favouring its deletion.

I am declining to make edits to this specific article to improve its WP:N ranking since as it stands it is notable from a FOSS-developer's perspective; I hope to encourage debate as to whether this measure of notability can be better aligned with WP:N.

ThomasNichols (talk) 10:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

• Keep per TRAVELLINGCARI. --Oldak Quill 12:28, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Response: Sources Added. Since many people voting for deletion primarily cite the article's lack of sources, I added some. The article has issues, yes, but WP:DELETE clearly states that "if the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion." This is my suggestion. Failing that, I would like to add or merge with GNU LilyPond to my vote above. With respect to ThomasNichols, declining to improve an article on the grounds that it has inherent notability to a subset of Wikipedians isn't likely to help it, sorry. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 13:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested comment. While the Linux Journal source is good, my view would change if there was more than one reliable source (IT World doesn't seem to even be referenced elsewhere Wikipedia). If this article gets deleted and then more good sources are found, I am not oppsed to recreation. - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 19:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a start. :) Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 20:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok, how about an article in Linux Magazine (notice that it's the cover story!) featuring ways to expand NoteEdit's capabilities using FluidSynth? I got marginally creative with Google and found more coverage. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 21:15, 9 May 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.