Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scientific Community Metaphor

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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 of the debate was NO CONSENSUS. -Splashtalk 03:50, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific Community Metaphor

This is an acticle about a non-notable paper1 written by it's author. I could live with that (being an inclusionist) if it wasn't for the fact that he links from a lot of inappropriate places to this article, overcategorizes it and reverts any changes not made by him. --R.Koot 14:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

1 The author has removed the fact that this is a paper from the article after it was listed on AfD. --R.Koot 20:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
The particular reference in question mentioned above is a journal article on the Scientific Community Metaphor that is cited in the following publications (among others):
  • Tad Hogg and Bernardo A. Huberman "Better Than The Best: The Power of Cooperation" Lectures in Complex Systems. CSSS: 1989 Lectures in Complex Systems. The Proceedings of the 1989 Complex Systems Summer School.
  • L. E. Hall and N. M. Avouris. "Methodological Issues of DAI Applications Interface Design: Transparency Analysis" (1992)
  • L. Moreau and C. Queinnec. "Distributed and Multi-Type Resource Management" (2002)
  • David Fitoussi and Moshe Tennenholtz "Choosing Social Laws for Multi-Agent Systems: Minimality and Simplicity" (2000)
  • Dejan S. Milojicic and Gul Agha and Philippe Bernadat and Deepika Chauhan and Shai Guday and Nadeem Jamali and Dan Lambright and Franco Travostino "Case Studies in Security and Resource Management for Mobile Object Systems" AAMAS 2002
  • Gul Agha, Ian A. Mason, Scott F. Smith and Carolyn L. Talcott "A Foundation for Actor Computation", Journal of Functional Programming Vol 7. No 1. 1997.
  • S. Labidi and W. Lejouad "De l'intelligence artificielle distribu'ee aux syst`emes multi-agents" Rapport de recherche INRIA SOPHIA-ANTIPOLIS 1993.
  • Luc Moreau and Christian Queinnec "Distributed Computations Driven by Resource Consumption" International Conference on Computer Languages. 1998
  • P. Moscato and F. Tinetti "Blending Heuristics with a Population-Based Approach" R.Rep.: Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 1994.
  • S. Laufmann "Toward Agent-Based Software Engineering for Information-Dependent Enterprise Applications" Journal of Software Engineering 1996
  • Michel Coriat "Formal Specification Using Agents Conceptualization" Labo MASI, Universite PARIS VI
  • R. M. Turner "The Tragedy of the Commons and Distributed AI Systems" Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Hidden Valley, Pennsylvania. 1993.
  • Gerhard Weiss "Some studies in distributed machine learning and organizational design" Technical Report FKI-189-94, Institut f¨ur Informatik, TU München 1994.
  • J. Euzenat "Building consensual knowledge bases: context and architecture" Towards very large knowledge bases. Knowledge Building and Knowledge Sharing 1995, pages 143--155. IOS Press, Amsterdam. 1995.
  • Keith Decker "Environment Centered Analysis and Design of Coordination Mechanisms" UM-CS-1995-069. 1995.
  • Shaw Green, Leon Hurst, Brenda Nangle, Pádraig Cunningham, Fergal Somers and Richard Evans "Software Agents: A Review" TCS-CS-1997-06 Dublin. 1997
  • Nadeem Jamali and Gul Agha and Indratmo and Xinghui Zhao "Decentralized Resource Control for Multi-Agent Systems" AAMAS 2004.
  • L. Gasser and J. P. Briot "Object-based Concurrent Programming and Distributed Artificial Intelligence" Distributed Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Praxis Kluwer Academic publishers. 1992.
--Carl Hewitt 21:45, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. --R.Koot 14:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Weak keep and Rewrite. Charles Steward and Fastfission convinced me this is just notable enough not to be original research. As this AfD seems to be going to a no-consensus I will start an RfC against User:CarlHewitt, so this article can be rewritten. --R.Koot 23:04, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. The article is about the Scientific Community Metaphor which is a notable area of computer science which is becoming increasingly important with the paradigm shift to massive concurrency engendered by Web Services and many-core computer architectures.--Carl Hewitt 17:04, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • A google search turns up references to the paper, and plenty of encyclopedia links, showing Carl Hewitt's linking handiwork, but little to substantiate its presence beyond the confines of this paper and the power of WP. This looks like self-promotion by other means. Delete pending demonstration of wider significance. To the point about the user's inappropriate behaviour, that is clearly no reason to strike down an article if it is otherwise noteworthy. If he persists with such violations, there are measures that should be taken and other editors can go in and excise the cruft. Dottore So 17:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
The article lists 4 publications directly on the subject matter.--Carl Hewitt 17:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
So all the other references are not on the SCM (as I suspected)? --R.Koot 20:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
As in many encyclopedia articles, references are cited for material that is relevant to the article.--Carl Hewitt 20:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Just for the record the article to which you are referring was published in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics SMC-11. 1981.--Carl Hewitt 21:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Original research it is, then. Thanks for clearing that up. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 21:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Are you familiar with Wikipedia:No original research?--Carl Hewitt 22:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Yup. Are you familiar with the old saw "when you're in a hole, stop digging"? I'd say all you are doing right now is pissing people off. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 22:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
On the Wikipedia, nobody can tell if you are a <pause> jokester;-)--Carl Hewitt 05:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Anville 22:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Bringing it up for deletion before a paper trail of arguments for and against content has been made seems overly agressive. Does not appear to be original because at least four articles have been published on it, and many more, and very notable people, reference it, making it seminal. It can't be just vanity because the prime author of the the concept is Kornfeld, not Hewitt. You can't delete articles just because the primary contributer is pissing people off. I think Hewitt can be persuaded to be more cooperative. Take your differences out on the Talk page first where it's more appropriate.
Montalvo 02:35, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  1. Non-notability and (therefore) being extremely close to original research are reasons enough.
The area discussed by the Wikipedia article is notable as evidenced by the 18 citations listed at the beginning of this page.--Carl Hewitt 15:12, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  1. From the references section in the acticle, I can only find one article which is directly about the SCM. That another paper cites this one doesn't mean they are about it or even related to it, just that the authors felt inspired by parts of it. Also Carl Hewitt is trying to make this paper seem like a methodoly of constructing distributed systems. He claims that it is notable now but refuses to give a satisfactable proof. Adn that it is becoming increasingly important, on which I can only reply that Wikipedia is not a Crystal Ball.
The Wikipedia article cites the following publications on the subject matter:
  • William Kornfeld and Carl Hewitt. "The Scientific Community Metaphor" IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, SMC-11. 1981
  • Bill Kornfeld. "The Use of Parallelism to Implement a Heuristic Search" IJCAI 1981.
  • Bill Kornfeld. Parallelism in Problem Solving MIT EECS Doctoral Dissertation. August 1981.
  • Bill Kornfeld. "Combinatorially Implosive Algorithms" CACM. 1982.
--Carl Hewitt 15:12, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  1. Check again [1]. Carl Hewitt seems to be as much the prime author as Kornfeld.
  2. Then please help me persuade him.
  3. Have already done so and I don't feel like putting more effort in it if the article ends up getting deleted. --R.Koot 10:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. DV8 2XL 11:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Recuse. I am withdrawing from this discussion. I am not able to comment intelligently on the topic, and I can no longer deal with this editor’s antics with a neutral attitude. That no constructive work can be on any article that he has had a hand in without that article being under the interdiction of an AfC is disgraceful and is an indicia of the contempt that he holds this community and the values that it strives to uphold. DV8 2XL 16:48, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: I don't think a delete outcome is appropriate for this article: the topic is notable as Carl Hewitt has amply documented, and as I am aware of from colleagues who are working in AI. There are problems with leaving the article as it stands, as CH is using the article to push his ideas in an inappropriate manner. I'll make an alternative suggestion that instead the article is merged into a broader article, where the SCM ideas are seen side-by-side with rival theories and a more balanced picture of the history emerges. The currently stub-like Intelligent agent article might be a better home. --- Charles Stewart 15:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: The topic has notability, agreed. Nevertheless, the position and importance of this idea in the network of sociological and philosophical concepts is still unclear. Carl Hewitt who appears to be one of the proponents this idea and the article, has extensively linked this article to other articles, (see [2]) thus possibly establishing for it a position in the network that it might not have had otherwise. This is damaging to WP. More seriously, I also regret that I need to mention the following: This action makes Hewitt suscepible to the charge that he is not acting in good faith, trying to use WP to distort the importance of his work. This is aggravated by similar behaviour in other places: see for instance Denotational semantics, which in my view should be rewritten from scratch, with only relatively minor mention of the actor model. I would urge Hewitt to stop this activity which is widely seen as pushing his own agenda. He can usefully contribute with his knowledge and experience to WP, but does not need to mention the actor model and other work of his at every turn.--CSTAR 19:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete: This article is really an advertisment of Carl Hewitt's work, with its proper title being "Carl Hewitt's personal scietific community metaphor". It starts out OK, but quickly degenerates into a combination of discussion of this Ether thing and references to Carl Hewitt's other work. When he makes references to physics, I find this article to be erroneous. The comments of Charles Stewart and CSTAR above also demonstate the inappropriateness of this article. Even if the subject of this article is notable, it should be documented by someone who can do so in an impartial manner and focussed on the concept itself. Until then, Wikipedia is better off without an article on this "scientific community metaphor" than with keeping the current article. --EMS | Talk 19:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    I should emphasise that I do find encyclopedic value to this article, and an article on this topic could hardly fail to put CH in a prominent place. The problem is with the role this article is playing within WP. --- Charles Stewart 20:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I hope that most abstracts of scientific papers have some sort of encyplopedic value. The question that is interesting is when it stops being original research and start being and mainstream scientific knowledge. A second point, the article start with The Scientific Community Metaphor is an approach to understanding scientific communities by extending pattern directed invocation programming languages that invoke high level procedural plans on the basis of messages.... Shouldn't that be the other way around? E.g. patern directed invocation programming languages modelled according to scientific communities? Carl? --R.Koot 20:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Historically, it was the other way around. The pattern-directed invocation programming languages came first and the Scientific Community Metaphor was developed afterwards. However, you are correct that at this point the pattern-directed invocation languages should be developed according to the Scientific Community Metaphor which is in fact the way that research is currently proceeding. However, the results have not yet been published.--Carl Hewitt 07:07, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't fully agree that the only problem is the role this article plays in WP. The fact of the matter is that for or better or worse, concepts and links of concepts created within WP have a tendency to diffuse outward; this tendency is in fact one of the best arguments against wikipedia . For example, the relations between Latour and SCM or Popper and SCM I believe are tenuous. I don't dispute that associations have not been made, but does this really justify the following statement in the 4th or 5th graf of the Bruno Latour article?:
In computer science there are interesting parallels with Latour's work on science in action and the Scientific Community Metaphor. Subsequent work by Latour and others in the sociology and philsophy of science have deepened this connection.
If such statements are placed in articles, they should be thoroughly vetted. They have not been.--CSTAR 20:34, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Try it, and time how long it takes before Carl puts it back in. --R.Koot 20:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I have conceded the point that the topic after which this article in entitled is probably encyclopedic. However, the article itself seems meander all over the place, bringing in the Turing test at one point and special relativity and the software paradigm of class inheritance at another. If this article is wholely rewritten by someone else I will happily change my vote. However, the only reason that I am not recusing myself is beacuse I know enough about software, relativity, and proper article flow to identify this article as the poor excuse of an article that it is. I cannot in good conscience allow it to stand as-is. --EMS | Talk 04:01, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
This suggests the possibility of shortening (drastically) the article and removing most of the links into it as an acceptable compromise (although there is nothing to compromise, not with me at least, because I'm not voting to keep). --CSTAR 05:36, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Recuse per DV8 2XL above. I have already had too many unpleasant interactions with Carl Hewitt and am not interested in engaging in yet more. I agree with almost every statement made above that wasn't made by Carl: the topic is probably sufficiently notable for some mention, somewhere; this article almost certainly needs editing and revision; it will be impossible to revise due to endless edits wars and lack of civility from Carl. There is a broader problem here: Carl is repeatedly engaging in behaviour that violates the spirit if not the letter of Wikipedia policy, and he seems immune to criticism and unable to reform. I am at a loss for what to do in such a situation. Its easy enough to vote delete but that hardly seems fair, and I certainly don't have the energy to do more than to ask Carl to, once again, take the criticism of others to heart and try to react to that criticism in a positive, constructive fashion. linas 02:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete as vanity and bordering with OR. I sympathise with Linas, as I have not had the will to indulge in discussion with Carl, which is generally a bad thing, but probably good for my nerves. Karol 10:00, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep. I'll admit, Hewitt is a bit abrasive and overly expansive in his additions, but this is a development of his actor model, which was important for Scheme's development. Let's not make this a referendum on Hewitt himself. --Maru (talk) Contribs 20:54, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
    I personally think that the content is as important as the topic in a case like this. So if you want to moot this action, then please do the rewrite. [I can't. Although I am a sotware engineer by trade, I have not dealt with this side of computer science. Instead I do much better in areas involving physics (in which I majored), especially relativity (in which I do independent research). So I know enough to see this article as written as invalid, but not enough to fix it.] To me, this is about the article, and it's being as written a significant part of Carl Hewitt's egregious self-promotion campaign. After all, the article talks more about Ether and physics than about the "Metaphor". --EMS | Talk 15:53, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. What parts of this article strike you as "invalid"? If you could be more explicit, it would help to improve the article. The article is constrained to talk about Ether because it is reporting on published work. Also it would be helpful if you could say a little more about what you would like to know about the "Metaphor". Regards,--Carl Hewitt 18:06, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete and Re-Write - A neutral party should rewrite this from scratch. 86.3.213.128 20:59, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Comment: Your opinion may carry more weight if you log in, as per this graf in the AfD page:
Unregistered and new users are welcome to contribute to the discussion, but their recommendations may be discounted, especially if they seem to be made in bad faith (for example, if they misrepresent their reasons).
--CSTAR 00:21, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom, Guy and EMS. KillerChihuahua 22:04, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Google Print indicates that this term and paper by Hewitt are referenced over forty separate books. I think that is sufficient evidence that it is notable enough for a Wikipedia article. I don't know anything about the guy himself or his tactics but this basic question seems beyond dispute. Whether the author himself wrote it means it should be parsed over for NPOV, but it doesn't violate NOR at all (it is published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed source). The place to discuss the behavior of the editor/author in question is RfC, not AfD. --Fastfission 22:34, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete or re-write - as is, the article is little more than a POV advertisement: it doesn't make clear exactly what the metaphor is or why it is relevant. It should either be deleted or completely rewritten by a neutral party. zowie 04:29, 21 November 2005 (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.