Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Perforce Jam

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 no consensus. Ezeu 02:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Perforce Jam

Perforce Jam (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Prodded by Fram. I'm moving it to AfD because I frankly don't know whether it should be stay or not. I think it might be a notable tool on the grounds that I think it, and its descendants, are used to build a suitable variety of projects (although not nearly as many as make), but I'm not sure how to best substantiate, or refute, that claim. But I'm going to vote Keep because I think it's more likely that it's a notable program (just not with a well-sourced article). - furrykef (Talk at me) 21:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as original prodder. Furrykef, thanks for bringing it here and being open about the article. I have the impression that it is not a notable software tool, and the article, which is over two years old and has been tagged for notability for two months, has no external independent sources (per WP:ATT) to indicate such notability. However, it may of course be that amongst the 143 distinct online sources (per Google[1]) or in some offline source, good, verifiable claims to notability are made.Fram 21:35, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
  • As for the google hits, I'll note that it's often just called "Jam". Also, a descendant like "KJam" will likely be referred to by that name, without mention of Perforce. Unfortunately, these names don't google very well... - furrykef (Talk at me) 21:52, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Okay, I know that you are probably not going to take the vote of an anonymous user into consideration, but when I saw that the article is proposed for deletion, I felt that I need to share my opinion: I often find these kinds of articles very useful, even if the mentioned piece of software is not very widely used (This is not the first deletion proposal that I regret to see). They can spare quite some googling, because many little pieces of information are collected on Wikipedia, that are difficult to gather by searching the web. I looked up Jam on WP because I needed it to build some software on Windows, but I am not a professional programmer, so most of the time I need a little help with these kinds of things. The WP article told me immediately that there are many different versions of Jam and I could download a Windows binary of FP Jam within a minute. Now if the only thing that you know is that you need some software named "Jam" (I didn't even know that it's called Perforce Jam) and google for it, you only find the official perforce page, which doesn't help you much with getting it working. So this WP article saved me a lot of time. Of course I know that WP shouldn't be a collection of download links, but still: at least this page is useful, unlike many others that contain less information and are not proposed for deletion (just a random example that I stumbled upon by accident a day ago: Simon Baldwin). And maybe Jam is notable in some circles (among people who make their living by programming). Otherwise why would it be used in the build system of several projects? ... So if you don't think that this article is harmful in any way, please keep it ... -- a Wikipedia user. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.177.46.38 (talk • contribs) 19:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
• Abstain: Jam (and its variants) is one of several build tool trying to fix problems with make and being only moderate successful here (the area of make tools got fragmented and people often preferre to create custom ones). Short overview of Jams could be found at [2] & [3]. The original Jam is abandoned and under-documented, Boost.Build (both versions) is very complex, under-documented but under active development. The current article is not much above mere collection of links. I do not vote because while Jam is not completely unknown it is unlikely to get useful coverage on WP (speaking from my experience here). Pavel Vozenilek 00:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Passes WP:ATT. ≈≈Carolfrog≈≈♦тос♦ 00:30, 18 March 2007 (UTC) Granted, the sources may be primary rather than secondary, but the prodder's argument that the sources are not independent because they are part of a narrow interested community (presumably computer programmers) doesn't hold water for me. Most computer programming tools may not have extensive coverage in the press. ≈≈Carolfrog≈≈♦тос♦ 00:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a good independent secondary source about Perforce Jam that establishes notability? I don't think I said that the sources are not independent because they are "part of a narrow interested community", but I think it fails WP:ATT because there are no reliable secondary sources. Fram 20:07, 18 March 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.