Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virtual synchrony

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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 decision taken, please take such discussions to the talk page of the article. This is Articles for deletion. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 13:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Virtual synchrony

Virtual synchrony (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Article reads like original research with the author, User:Ken Birman, being the originator of the term: "Since the model was first proposed by "Birman" and Joseph in a series of papers during the period 1985-1987, virtual synchrony has...". This is indicative of a conflict of interest, especially since the majority of the cited references are the author's own work. Either stubbify for expansion or Redirect to an extant article. This was a contested prod. Cquan (don't yell at me...) 19:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment from author: Yes, I was associated with the early days of the model, but by now the model has been used in tons of systems and products, including some very important ones. Google the term and you get work from MIT right now at the top of the list, and not work I was in any way related to. The article is unbiased and cites work done at Hebrew University, UCSB, IBM, Microsoft, and even a CORBA standard. I'm not selling anything, just in case anyone is wondering. I have nothing to gain here except a sharing of knowledge. I've also deleted the specific line that the editor objected to, -—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ken Birman (talk • contribs)
    • Comment. My main complaint is when people CREATE articles on subjects where there is a clear conflict of interest and especially when they cite themselves as sources (the citing appears to be gone now, thanks for that much). However, you should always leave it to others to create an article if the topic is notable and contribute to it then (creating it and/or doing extensive POV-introducing edits just looks bad). I'm sure someone will be willing to save the article by going through it and conforming to neutral point of view in a rewrite. There's no time limit on this discussion either...just when it reaches consensus. Right now the material just strikes me as having a bit too much POV to be ignored, but we'll see what some others (hopefully who are better informed on the topic than I) have to say. Remember, this is just my humble little concern and if the community wants it to stay, then it stays. -Cquan (don't yell at me...) 19:47, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. First of all, I'm not yelling at you. But look, be reasonable: this is a widely used model that genuinely runs the New York Stock Exchange, the French ATC system, and other major systems. It runs widely important products from companies like IBM and Microsoft -- products I have absolutely nothing to do with. It corresponds to a major industry standard. Isn't there a threshold at which the fact that I did invent the term twenty five years ago stops being the key issue here? For goodness sake, I don't even work on this anymore... the model just lives on... -—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ken Birman (talk • contribs)
  • Keep & Comment Please Read WP:COI Before Using It as a Reason for Deletion! COI is NOT a reason for deletion, here's the operative sentence in the article: "Conflict of interest is not a reason to delete an article, but lack of notability is." This phrase, "virtual synchrony" returns 46 all in title (not all distinct) hits on Google Scholar. There seems not much evidence that the subject does not belong in Wikipedia. If the article is poorly written, and contains a COI, deal with these issues properly in their correct location, but please don't nominate an AfD when it obviously needs cleaned up rather than removed. That said, what COI usually leads to is crappy articles, for this reason alone I urge editors to reconsider before writing an article on their pet topic. KP Botany 23:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment. Actually the deletion reason was as original research, with the COI stuff being supporting/pointing out. I did this off the page, so here it is again: I think I jumped the gun a bit here on AfD, so sorry about that. I'm supporting Keep and rewrite at the moment since there seems to be plenty of salvageable material that falls outside of OR. Cquan (after the beep...) 23:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
      • Reply Okay, since you nominated it, strike out your nomination and start rewriting--doesn't mean gobbleygook to me. I'll be impressed if you can make it into understandable English. I think its biggest failure is it doesn't start out with a general term about what this is, look at the introductory sentence to Finite state machine: "A finite state machine (FSM) , finite state automaton (plural: automata) is a model of behavior composed of a finite number of states, transitions between those states, and actions." A halfway intelligent person can follow what they are saying here. This tends to be another issue with COI articles, they're written by insiders for other insiders, and this is a general encyclopedia. KP Botany 23:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
      • Reply Actually this is a good suggestion (adding a short introduction) and I've done that. I wasn't able to keep it down to 2 lines, but I did refer to the state machine entry, which is a very nice one, and tried to keep it easy to understand. As you correctly point out, technical concepts can be very hard to follow for people who lack background, but this doesn't mean that one can't give at least some sense of what the sory is. Hopefully the edit improves things. I should also point out that I did remove the section that the original editor objected to (I don't know if it suffered from POV quite in the sense (s)he felt, but rather than argue it, I just deleted that part). True, this is still an article that will be more useful to experts, but now it should also be at least approachable by a high school kid with a homework assignment to learn about how air traffic control software handles computer crashes, or how the NYSE does so. -—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ken Birman (talk • contribs) 07:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
        • Reply Ken, did you read your talk page? Your lead sentence is no good, there are still multiple problems with this article--Wikipedia is NOT the place for articles for experts. If you wanted someone to fix your computer would you hire a computer repair technician or the person who wrote the operating system? I can write an operating system, but no one in my family would let me within five feet of their computer armed with a screwdriver to take the back off whatever that big part is called. I still think you would be better off letting someone else write this article--Wikipedia has an amazing number of top notch editors with no COI who can and do write very good, sometimes even brilliant articles for a lay audience on technical topics. KP Botany 18:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • From Ken: Look guys, I think you are dead set on enforcing a kind of tyranny of the weakest common denominator. If this is what Wiki is really all about, sure, do your thing. But the fact remains that the technology that runs stock exchanges and air traffic control systems just might not be the sort of thing that any random guy who has no idea how computers work could comprehend. And, as it happens, I can easily find thousands of wiki articles that share this property.

Some famous guy once said something about how a thing should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. There is a kind of arrogance inherent in assuming that random people should be able to write on any subject, with little notice, and will do so better than people who have actually worked on the topic. This concept that anyone who has worked on, say, string theory is immediately biased and hence the wrong source for an article on string theory is kind of wierd. For example, I know nothing at all about how radial tires are manufactured. Does this make me a good potential author for an article on that process?

In the particular case, we have the interesting problem that the article originally cited work, but some of it was by me. So I deleted it because of the big fuss made by editor #0. Now editor #1 wants the references restored. Sure, pull them back off the history of the page! It isn't like they went away for real... just got deleted by me at some random person's request, because those articles happen to include some written by me. No surprise, actually: I did invent this model, 20 years ago. Maybe it would be better if one of you restores those references?

I personally think the wiki community needs to think this whole policy through. Why? Well, (1) you don't enforce it, really. If I look at articles on, say, publish-subscribe, where do they point out that that term is actually a trademark of a single company, TIBCO, and that hence any publish-subscribe technology must be a product of theirs? Well, gosh, it doesn't. And do you folks really think that the article on that topic was really written without any POV? If so, well, I admire your faith in human goodness...

Reason (2): Non-experts often screw up articles that relate to sophisticated things. This would fall under the category of: do you really want to learn about string theory from someone who has never really, deeply, thought about string theory? Sure you would... just what you would want in that wiki page, right? Well, um, no. In fact you would much rather learn from an expert. And every single expert has published on the topic. So, well... guess that the POV thing can be bent now and then...

Reason (3): Wiki pages should be unstandable by people who have no background of any kind in any subject of any sort whatever. OK, I'm ok with that. So how come you don't object to the wiki on string theory? Or on the wave/particle duality of light? Or do you just mean wiki pages on virtual synchrony should have this property?

Reason (4): If we follow the reasoning of the expert editors weighing in above, nobody will know why the New York Stock Exchange never seems to crash during the trading day, why it is safe to fly into Europe, and why the AEGIS doesn't periodically need to be rebooted... Is this bad? Well, I would say that Wiki does a poor job of capturing all knowledge in the universe under that form of thinking.

But look: go for it. Delete the article. Write one of your own. Just be consistent: get rid of the ones on publish-subscribe, and string theory, and wave/particle duality too. Be true to your beliefs... -—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ken Birman (talk • contribs) 21:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


'There is a kind of arrogance inherent in assuming that random people should be able to write on any subject, with little notice, and will do so better than people who have actually worked on the topic.'
Also the kind of arrogance inherent in assuming that everyone who writes Wikipedia articles is a moron, and anyone who isn't you can't do anything. KP Botany 02:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
KP, it isn't polite to mischaracterize what other people say. When did I ever suggest that you or anyone else was a moron? My sense, so far, is that you guys are a bit quick to flame -- is this the usual style for the Wiki crowd? -—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ken Birman (talk • contribs) 22:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Ah, my brain must be razzled, you said "thring theory," and, well, you know, us Wikipedia editors really have thwinking limites. Let me recover from the big words before I decide what all us Wikipedia editors are. I might get it right then. Probably not, though..... KP Botany 02:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Woah, woah...ok, everyone simmer down and be nice. Ken, it's obvious you're frustrated by this whole thing and believe me I regret even looking into this article in the first place...goes to show what my meddling personality can do if it gets out of hand. ANYWAY, to be perfectly honest, the original article is too technical and sounds too much like a research lecture. Now, I may not be the ideal candidate to judge the string theory or wave/particle duality articles since I'm interested and read a bit into those subjects, but at the very least the intro had enough of a "dumbed down" explanation for a general audience. I think the intro paragraph as it stands now is fine (the accuracy of it I'm not qualified to judge) as far as clarity, although if a nice "simple" definition exists, it may be good to lead with that. I think this AfD is pretty much moot now (hopefully an ADMIN WILL CLOSE IT SOON PLEASE). The article still needs some work for at least some basal understanding by commonfolk. Also keep in mind that Wikipedia is VAST and just because there are articles out there that are not compliant with policy/guidelines, doesn't give an excuse to follow the bad trend. Expecting every editor to roll up their sleeves and take on every extant problem is unreasonable. Please don't take any of this personally. Thanks. Cquan (after the beep...) 03:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I'll tell you what: I'll let the folks who know Wiki best discuss this for a while without joining in. Not clear what I can contribute here, in any case. Just let me know if you end up deciding you need my help in any way. I am more than happy to abide by the consensus, whether that means that someone else rewrites this (which would be just fine as long as the facts are kept right), the article gets deleted (hey, it isn't my encyclopedia), or I go back and restore some of the references -- although many do have my name on them. You can pull the reference materials up by looking at the edit history; they were previously at the very bottom of the page. -—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ken Birman (talk • contribs) 08:14, 7 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.