Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prolog standards compliance

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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 was no consensus. Mangojuicetalk 17:45, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prolog standards compliance

Prolog standards compliance (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This collection of charts appears to me to be an indiscriminate collection of information. FisherQueen (Talk) 11:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The article perhaps belongs in a sandbox at this stage of development. As yet there are no explanations of what the tables mean. But this is on its way. The Prolog programming language is governed by an ISO standard. At present there is no prolog implementations that meet the ISO standard - and this is important. When completed the article will describe how the Prolog programming languages fail in this respect and the implications of this failure. All information will be verifiable, mostly from peer-reviewed publications. I think FisherQueen is being a bit overzealous at this stage. ParkerJones2007 11:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
For those not familiar with Prolog, it's a programming language taught as part of computer science degrees at many (if not most) good universities. ParkerJones2007 11:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think FisherQueen was being overzealous, since as it is now, the article looks like someone who doesn't understand Wikipedia decided to post dozens of completely inscrutable charts for no reason. I don't mean any offense, but articles that are genuinely in progress towards becoming something acceptable don't usually look like that one does. Even if they were explained, that many charts seems highly excessive (to a layperson such as myself, anyway). I am torn about what to vote, since the AFD won't close for five days and I do believe this article may be significantly different then. But my instinct right now is Userfy, with no prejudice against the article being moved back after improvement. Propaniac 16:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. Agree that this seems to be a somewhat indiscriminate collection of information. Propaniac can userfy anytime he wants. Someguy1221 19:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Indiscriminate collection of information?
The information in the tables has almost a one-to-one correspondance with the ISO Prolog standard: ISO/IEC 13211-1[1]. Are you therefore also claiming that the standard is an indiscriminate collection of information? ParkerJones2007 09:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. Also note that Wikipedia is not a mirror for its sources. And I believe perhaps the below comments are the best option, moving this to Wikisource. Large tables of information should contribute to the understanding of a concept, but this is more of a reference. Someguy1221 18:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Idea: Keep article but Wikisource tables
If it is the large number of tables that are the main objection then would it be better to have them in Wikisource while the article summarises the results? From WP:NOT#IINFO, item 9:
"Articles which are primarily comprised of statistical data may be better suited for inclusion in Wikisource as freely available reference material for the construction of related encyclopedic articles on that topic." ParkerJones2007 10:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
  • idea:pls don't use headings, stuffs up the toc on afd list, thx  ⇒ bsnowball  10:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Give the guy some credit: he made the largest article on Wikipedia! That takes some fortitude. Don't be too hasty about deleting this one: it's a monument to human endurance.  ;) Fifth Rider 21:39, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Just citing WP:NOT is a bit vague. Could you explain which part you think is relevant? I'm glad you at least like the colours... ParkerJones2007 02:34, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Hmmm. It is kind of interesting for a specialist. It would be better to have an overview with historical information, how Prolog evolved and how/why it got divergent at the end. Visual Prolog, bad on standardizing but popular is not mentioned at all. Pavel Vozenilek 22:14, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Summary so far:

  • doesn't look like a usual article
    • Inaccurate, look at other articles covering ISO standards ISO 8583, ISO 639:x, there are hundreds.
  • looks like an indiscriminate collection of data
    • Inaccurate, the article has 1-1 correspondence with an ISO standard. This is apparent if you look at the standard.
  • The article is a mirror for its sources
    • Inaccurate, the article does not mirror its source - just look at the source.
  • The article is too long
    • it is long...

(Summary made by User:ParkerJones2007)

I guess people (at least me) expect a bit more narrative article which describes how Prolog had evolved from Edinburg implementation to ISO Prolog and what has happened since then. This is more like engineering table. Pavel Vozenilek 21:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Pavel, as I'm sure you know you're very welcome to contribute to the article and I think your suggestions about the standard's history would definitely improve it. The question being debated here is not whether the article is complete but whether it should exist in the first place. ParkerJones2007 09:27, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Possible Speedy Delete as probable copyvio. See this .pdf document for a copyrighted version of essentially the same content. It would appear that someone copy and pasted from a similar publication, perhaps from an ISO specification or from course materials. --T-dot ( Talk/contribs ) 22:58, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
    • I wrote (most of) the article. There was no copy and paste. The tables do not appear in the ISO standard (the document you refer to). The only thing they have in common are *some* section headings. The section headings are concepts of a programming language that existed prior to this document. Claiming copyright on them would be like claiming copyright on words like "sodium", "oxygen" and other chemical elements. ParkerJones2007 07:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Withdrawing comments pending further study. Deepest Apologies to ParkerJones2007, with an urgent request to provide verifiability from reliable sources - otherwise it may appear to constitute original research which is also forbidden. I still feel it must either constitute a reorganized and reformatted version from unidentified expert sources, or constitute original research if ParkerJones2007 IS "the expert", in which case we may have other issues to deal with, such as a possible conflict of interest or self published sourcing. Nevertheless again I apologize for assuming an apparent copyright violation of someone else's published materials. --T-dot ( Talk/contribs ) 09:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
No problem T-dot, no offence taken. The data is neither original research nor am I the author. They were reported (in summarised form) in a peer-reviewed publication that is cited at the end of the WP article. The publication does not contain the individual results due to space limitations. However, the results are important, that's why I created an article here. I'm of course open to suggestions as to improve formatting and organisation. ParkerJones2007 09:40, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Change to Keep and Improve, per above retraction of Speedy Delete. Recommend article improvements: Had to go "outside" to learn that this is related to Artificial Intelligence logic and coding, for example. It needs a 2-3 paragraph introductory explanation of what the article is about - to lay a foundation of what the tables mean. Then each table or section needs a paragraph explaining what it means to a lay person. There are plenty of examples that could be used as boilerplate models (not endorsing content, just showing examples of how to make the article useful to the lay person students of the subject): Table of logic symbols, Prolog, MATLAB, Production system. --T-dot ( Talk/contribs ) 15:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Speedy delete per T-Dog G1ggy! Review me! 02:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Please see reply to T-dot ParkerJones2007 07:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC).
      • (Might want to reconsider the validity of the Speedy Delete, due to my retraction above). By the way I love the "T-Dog" typo! Better than the original! --T-dot ( Talk/contribs ) 15:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Yup. Utcursch is correct. The article needs work (e.g. tables with only green are excessive), but if we accept the Parker's assurances that this is neither plagiarism nor his own synthesis - and I see no reason not to - then I think it's pretty clear at this point that it is suitable for inclusion. --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 14:54, 6 June 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.