Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quicksort implementations

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 transwiki and delete. — Feb. 23, '06 [05:15] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

[edit] Quicksort implementations

Wikipedia is not a code repository. This article is not encyclopedic content; it's useful, but belongs somewhere else, like the Great Compiler Shootout or Sourceforge or maybe Wikisource. bmills 15:19, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• strong keep extremely useful article. the code makes the point. there are other areas of code in WP. Mccready
• Delete or move to WikiSource or WikiBooks. This is not encyclopedic content. The Quicksort article already provides implementations in pseudocode, an imperative language, a functional language and a logical programming language. —Ruud 16:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it'd go better on WikiBooks than WikiSource, since most of it isn't sourced. --bmills 17:02, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Comment My understanding was that this was largely a defensive measure to deal with people constantly wanting to add a implementation of quicksort in their language of choice to the quicksort page - users are deflected here rather than deleting implementations off the quicksort page, and potentially righting revert wars over it. "somewhere else" is a good sentiment, but I would suggest it would be useful to figure out where exactly. Leland McInnes 17:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

WikiBooks might provide the best fit — maybe there needs to be a "Programming examples" book there or something. I don't think it's useful to move inappropriate content to back alleys and dark corners of the encyclopedia; if people keep adding non-encyclopedic content, we need to point them toward Wikipedia's guidelines and policies, rather than toward articles with lower standards. --bmills 17:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I am not so much defending its inclusion on Wikipedia as suggesting that finding a suitable alternative will make the whole process smoother and easier. Wikibooks sounds like a good idea. Perhaps we should pursue that. Leland McInnes 19:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Delete or move to WikiBooks — Wikipedia is not a code repository --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:09, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete to let it wander off and die where it will, per poster, Allan. If this goes to WikiBooks, fine. If people have to do their homework themselves, rather than copy it from Wikipedia — even better. :) --Mgreenbe 19:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

  Comment The argument against X implementations pages is that anything interesting about the algorithm is already in X; anything interesting about the languages of implementation is already on respective pages. So all that leaves is a bunch of code: Wikipedia is not a source code repository.

  I agree, however, that some code is useful: in infinite loop, buffer overflow, and pointer, viz. this code with concrete, unambiguous semantics relevant to a particular point has this meaning. But implementations are reiterating what has been said in general in pseudocode.

  For example, the C in-place implementation of quicksort is interesting, but what is interesting about it is that the work is done in place; put it on the main page. Functional versions which make naive allocations are relevant to FP; the problem of aliasing and other optimizations of functional code should be mentioned there.

  Lastly, the copyright and licensing implications of posting code from a non-GFDL-compatible project make implementation listings a terrible idea.

  I think the existence of "defensive measures" is fairly silly. If we can keep the day and year pages free of vanity, we can keep implementations out of Wikipedia. --Mgreenbe 19:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Strong delete. WP is not manual for a programmer. All similar "articles" has been deleted so far, AFAIK. As of its use as defensive agains constant adding: it doesn't improve Wikipedia. Pavel Vozenilek 19:44, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Delete. Per Mgreenbe, and the GFDL isn't even compatible with the GPL:

Incompatibility with the GPL. It's GPL-incompatible in both directions. This means that you can't legally extract text from a GFDL'ed manual and put it into integrated help strings in a GPL'ed program. And you can't extract code or comments from a GPL'ed program and put it into a GFDL'ed manual. (Without getting explicit permission to relicense from every copyright-holding contributor, that is.) [1]

One of the fundamental principles of human/computer interface design is: Don't surprise the human. (Don't do the unexpected.) Here, the idea that Wikipedia content is "open and free", yet at the same time cannot be integrated into "free as in speech" GPL software due to license incompatibility (the two licenses being from the same organization, no less) goes against what most rational people will expect. Source code does NOT belong in Wikipedia. —Pradeep Arya (Talk | Contrib) 21:43, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Delete as per others above. I had hoped some form of compromise, such as putting all such content on Wikibooks, could be worked out to ease the process (as this policy should logically be enforced on several other such pages) and help avoid protracted debates. It now looks unlikely that I will be able to muster sufficient support for such a policy, especially in light of the GPL/GFDL issues. Given that such a policy is unlikely to be established, let's speed things to their end here and start on the other similar pages. Leland McInnes 22:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
• Transwiki to wikisource (or books). Absoulutely do not delete. It would be preferable to keep & cleanup the page than to do that (it could be suitable to leave this as a main article under the already-detailed Quicksort article, but it may be too much of a fork). I think a transwiki is appropriate. --Karnesky
• Transwiki, e.g. to wikisource/wikibooks. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-02-20 13:10Z
• Transwiki. Although not meant for an encyclopedia, the information is valuable. -- ^Evanx(tag?) 04:27, 21 February 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.