Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Method Engineering Encyclopedia

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This is about the WikiProject Method engineering.

Concerns have already been expressed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Method engineering that this is not an appropriate project for Wikipedia. The most important being that it is original research.

I am starting this stub to try and obtain a proper, well-advertised discussion on this matter. A previous discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Method engineering was closed with the conclusion nomination withdrawn with no outside votes for deletion. Given that three individual contributions are receiving strong delete votes at the moment, I would like to see some outside votes.

The three debates in question are:

Another set of related articles in this project is:

-- RHaworth 11:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

An (at the moment incomplete) list of aticles created (most) or edit (a few) by the members of this project is being constructed at User:R. Koot/Method engineering. —Ruud 23:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Comment by RHaworth

  • My personal recommendation is transfer to a separate Wiki for the Method Engineering Encyclopedia. -- RHaworth 11:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
    Doesn't that essentially mean deleting the articles and ancouraging their creators to start a new Wiki of their own? That's fine with me, but our side of thing will largely involve AfDing the other articles that you've listed. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 13:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
  • One would hope that if the creators start their own Wiki, they would have the decency to go round and mark all their creations here with {{db|now on our own Wiki}} ! But if they don't, the conclusion of this debate together with an agreed list will serve as authority to delete without AfD's for every article.
I agree with the comment below that some overview articles can remain. There are two overview articles which desperately need to be written straight away: product software and method engineering ! (I see they have made two unsuccessful attempts to write the first one.) -- RHaworth 10:52, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with RHaworth's proposal, though I think having a brief article in Wikipedia on something like CMMI as an overview of the topic would be fine. These more in depth articles would be better served in a seperate wiki though. --Isotope23 13:25, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Concur. As with the Cantors some time ago, let the ME "team" create their own Wiki, to discuss and document their theses, and leave a link to it, on this Wiki, for those who want that degree of detail. In due course an agreed brief form of words can be dropped in here, to summarise the entire concept-field. -- Simon Cursitor 07:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Yup. Transwiki to Wikia. Stifle (talk) 20:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I will try to speak with prof. Brinkkemper personally this week to clarify matters. Most of these articles have been written in an inappropriate way (as I've seen happen before when Wikipedia is used in a class projects) but I think there is a lot of material than can be salvaged here. Simply delteing everything would look like a waste to me. —Ruud 00:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
    • [removed blunt comment about the quality of the articles —Ruud] —Ruud 02:43, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
  • To all, I would like to reflect to the original discussion about our Wikiproject here where the problem with our work seems to be that it is not written in line with the WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, WP:V and WP:RS policies. The nomination for deletion of the project page was withdrawn, however the nomination is still visible at the top of the Wiki. Moreover, I would like to repeat the fact that our work is not original research. All efforts put in the updating process of existing Wiki's as well as the creation of new Wiki's is a direct result of a mandatory litarature study that every participating student committed. Therefore, all new knowledge originates from liteature. All students apply the Meta-Modeling Technique to explain the integrity of their Wiki topic of choice (all methods in the field of information systems and product software engineering). This may tend to give a flavor of originality, but the technique originates from 2003 (therefore also no original research). Also, the technique is only used to graphically represent facts, that would otherwise have are also represented textually. All models that students have incoporated in their Wiki's are direct translations of textual, factual elements. In my opinion, none of the incorporated efforts of our students are therefore against the WP:NOR policy. I do however agree that the other policies may be lacking in our works, but I propose to solve that (just as the original discussion actually concluded) instead of moving all our efforts to our own hosted Wiki. This way our efforts would become static and unaccessible to the larger audience of Wikipedia. Please consider my facts, opinion and proposal to work on the WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, WP:V and WP:RS policies instead of removing all work. - Regards, Jurr 08:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Ruud, please try to contact me instead of Prof. Brinkkemper as I am the first contact person related to our Wikipedia efforts in our research group. I would really appreciate to have things all clarified as we intend to live by the Wikipedia policies as much as we can. We are just not keen at it at this moment but we want to learn. Your previous remark is quite against the WP:Etiquette, Wikipedia:Don't_disrupt_Wikipedia_to_illustrate_a_point and WP:No_personal_attacks policies. I sincerely hope however that you are a bit more willing to point us in the right direction. - Jurr 08:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by John Reid

Well, let's start at the beginning: What are the facts?

A large team of people from Utrecht University have set up camp here. They have written a large number of pages on a rather ethereal subject: "Method engineering". In a nutshell, this seems to be the study of how to write computer programs -- specifically, how to abstract or model a real-world system within the computer.

Related topics:

Editors who have come here from Utrecht present us with unique challenges:

  • They probably know much more about these topics than just about any other Wikipedians.
  • They seem to know much less about our styles, policies, and guidelines than we might prefer (like any other new editors).
  • Unlike most new editors, these come in a large group, with an existing power structure and existing loyalties.
  • They are extremely active editors. There seem to be several dozen related pages; individual editors have made hundreds of edits each.
  • They are unconcerned, at present, in any part of Wikipedia outside of their area of interest. They do not edit other articles, they do not discuss on talk, create user pages, or in some cases bother to register on wiki.

We may need to be concerned with the issues generated by these facts.

A quick look at some of these related articles suggests that they are well-thought-out; while they may fall far short of our standards in respect of style and adherence to guidelines, they nevertheless appear to contain good material. Some of this may be original research, which is unacceptable; some may be verifiable, encyclopedic content. We don't know yet. To the extent that this material is unsourced, unverifiable, or original research, it must be removed. But to the extent that it is good content for our project, we'd like to retain it. Like all other contributions, these pages have been submitted under GFDL; we can keep what we like. Are these topics notable? Are they suitable for inclusion in a general-reference work? I tend to think not -- but then, we have quite a few articles on highly abstract, specialized topics.

We don't know if we can assimilate this pack of scholars from Utrecht. We don't yet know if they are willing to be assimilated. If we permit these pages to remain, then it seems likely that we will also retain the group of editors. They seem to discuss these pages largely outside of our process. Thus, it seems there's a risk that a segment of our project will be removed from the control of the overall Wikipedian community.

It is extremely tempting to resolve all these issues by politely showing the entire gang -- editors and articles alike -- the door. Let them set something up elsewhere to suit their needs. And that may be best. On the other hand, we may be throwing both good content and potentially valuable editors out.

I've never been very happy with the constant influx of poorly-educated, immature editors; many leave quickly, but some stay to become constant problems. They add a great deal of useless fluff to the project and generate unnecessary contention by raising dead issues and just generally acting badly. We continue to welcome a parade of individual newcomers, each of whom may consume human and machine resources, in hope that we can contain their disruptive behaviors long enough to train them as useful editors. I dislike to think we will continue on this difficult path while pushing out what may be a fine group of editors.

On the other hand, I seriously worry about the precedent we will set if we permit an invasion of our community by a well-organized gang with outside loyalties and structure, bent on pursuing their own private agenda.

This is a complex situation. It will take some time just to figure out all the issues, let alone the consequences; it's far too soon to say what position we might take. John Reid 13:40, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


I agree with just about ebverything that you say. With regard to individual articles, though, I don't think that we should treat them as a whole when deciding on AfDs, for example. the AfDs brought so far should be allowed to go through (the alternative is a unilateral rejection of consensus (which they've all achieved so far). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:01, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't feel strongly about existing AfDs; after all, the pages can always be undeleted later. It's not clear to me that sufficient consideration has been given them; very light participation indeed. But it's a small point. I'm more concerned that we work out a consistent policy on all this stuff; there's quite a lot of it. It will satisfy nobody if we randomly delete some, keep others, and merge a few. That doesn't mean that all must be kept or all deleted; but I do think a consistent approach is called for. John Reid 18:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Comment by Mark G

Gentlepeople, as (I hope) a neutral in these discussions I have a couple of points to make.

  1. Some of the entries that seem to have been provided by the project are certainly based on referenced sources, techniques and tools and as such I would fully support their presence on Wikipedia. examples include:
  2. I am however concerned at the volume (quantity) of text on those pages that appears to have been drwan directly (close to verbatim) from the seminal texts themselves and as such the potential copyright violation that may have resulted.
  3. I am also concerned about the large number of pages such as those on UML, ITIL and other processes and practices that have been tagged by this project in the past few days, many of which don't appear to contain significant input from and certainly can't be held to be a part of the work of this project. There is a difference between arguing that a page forms a component of the complete work covered by, or is referenced by .... and suggesting that a page is a part of ... the project. Some might read this as a cynical attempt to make the project appear more valuable and a contributor of more material than it has, to date, contributed. I don't think that this is neccesary and believe that much of the work proposed by the project is worthy of inclusion on the basis that:
    1. It follows the Wikipedia style guidelines
    2. It accurately describes the processes, frameworks and methods that is proposes
    3. That it doesn't exceed fair use doctrine or other relevant legal rights of the author(s)
    4. That the project identifies it's 'contribution' and doesn't attempt to claim work that is, in part or in whole, the work of other individuals or of the community as a whole.
    5. Preferably (but less essential) that the page creators/significant contributors provide some Talk: type information and forum to discuss their work and become actively involved in it so as to engage others in its improvement and enhancement.

Also please note that pages such as ISPL have not followed Wikipedia guidelines for attribution of images and as a result are scheduled to, or have had, their images deleted or removed which detracts considerably from any value add in the article, and potentially reduces the volume of non-copyright material included.

Simply my POV but I hope a contribution from outside might be useful.

Mark G 23:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Mark, when I noticed the flagging of the ITIL page as a part of the MEE project, I was as worried as you! Therefore I contacted the originator of the flagging. He seems not to be part of this project but instead (as a Wiki-admin) tracking where changes by the MEE Team occured. Anyhow I don't yet know how a planned delete will affect the pages non-MEE people (like us) worked on. That still worries me a lot! I think the communication on both sides (MEE and Admins) is worth improofing. Regards, --Goonies 07:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments by Stifle

Wikipedia is not a free web host, as such these should be transwikied to Wikia. They appear to be original research or highly specialized information. Stifle (talk) 00:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi there. Just a declaration up-front, I am not anything to do with the MEE project but am an ITIL specialist in the UK several of the ITIL pages / edits made by their team are valuable encyclopedic content and definately belong in an encyclopedic format, I can't comment with authority outside of ITIL/PRINCE/SSADM but believe that in these areas items should stay. See Ruud's comments below. Mark G 00:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Ruud

I reviewed a number of the articles created by this project and would strongly advise agains mass-deleting or mass-transwikiing the articles. Several of the articles are encyclopedic and well-written, and therefore should stay one Wikipedia, some have already been here for a year. Others can be made into encyclopedic content with some copyediting/merging/removal of original research. I believe buyer utility map (copy in my userspace) belonged to this category (but it was deleted on the grounds of original research, which was at most true of part of it). Other articles are on inherently unencyclopedic subjects, and no matter if they are well or badly written, have no place on Wikipedia (I believe new venture belongs to this category). —Ruud 00:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Charles T. Betz

I have noted the appearances of these banners on core topics I also am tracking. I am a senior enterprise architect for a US Fortune 50 financial services firm and independent author, concerned with matters of running large scale IT effectively. I assure other Wikipedians that the topics apparently being co-opted by the Utrecht group are of pivotal importance to my professional field. ITIL, UML, and CMM(I) span FAR beyond the efforts of this group and in fact are matters of great controversy and ferment in the field of information technology. Suggestions that these articles be removed in toto are inadvisable. The Wikipedia restrictions on original research and wholesale copying should be adhered to, but within the bounds of those restrictions the articles should be allowed to grow organically - I would not like to see them held to some standard of brevity.

Charles T. Betz 01:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I am researching further. The meta-modeling technique article is clearly original research, and misleading as an introduction to metamodeling. I have attached a brief intro paragraph which probably isn't up to Wiki standards but shows the direction that such an article would need to go IMHO. Actually on second thought maybe I'll just leave it in the discussion, but the article should not stay where it is, as it is, under any circumstances. I can assist in getting OMG subject matter experts to contribute. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charles T. Betz (talk • contribs)

Charles, yours is exactly the kind of help we need here. Thank you. John Reid 06:48, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Smerdis of Tlön

I am a biased observer here. Frankly, I have recently been gravely concerned by a number of articles relating to business related subjects. The basic problem they share is that they are written in hyperinflated prose. They bristle with buzzwords, tautologies, and empty abstractions: they seem to be written in a deliberately obscure style to lend the appearance of rigour or grandeur to painfully obvious and uninformative platitudes.

A brief example, from morphological analysis, which ought to be about grammar anyways:

A complex problem has several characteristics as described below:
  • Multi-dimensional
A multi-dimensional problem is a problem that involves not only one aspect but various aspects. For example, the complex problem might have to deal with financial, political and social dimensions/ aspects at the same time.
  • Uncertain
The dimensions of the complex problem are continuously and randomly changing and there is no control. This situation makes the use of the causal method or simulation less suitable in the sense of the reliability of the solution they produce.
  • Immeasurable
There is no right or wrong in the solution of the problem, instead better or worse need to be developed.

This style of writing contains far more words than data, in my opinion; it is heavy with tautology (A multi-dimensional problem is a problem that involves not only one aspect but various aspects!) and whatever point it makes could certainly be made in fewer words and plainer, less abstract English.

This may be peripheral to the concerns of this discussion, but it is my concern specifically. I am coming around to the opinion that I should at least start proposing the deletion of any articles I come across that are written in this style, which is so bad as to be irredeemable in my opinion. And it seems to me that several of the articles associated with this project may fall within the scope of my concerns. Smerdis of Tlön 19:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that you may fall into the anti-cruft camp. That's fine; so do I. I believe that all articles should be suitable for a general audience. John Reid 02:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Somewhat related to this - some of these articles, like Capability Maturity Model Integration SM, are rather liberal in their use of trademark/service mark symbols - that one even includes 'SM' in the title. This is against the Manual of Style. -- Mithent 18:24, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Ick. Does this count as advertising? If someone is trying to make money off of this, or consultants are in the business selling services based on these texts to their marks, this could pose legal issues as well. Smerdis of Tlön 16:48, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Allan McInnes

I have, over the past week or so, run across a number of articles written by the method engineering group. On the whole, they seem to be reasonably well-written, and well researched. I'm not sure that all of the articles are necessarily appropriate for Wikipedia. But I think that many of them are, and that many others have useful content that might be salvaged. My principal concern with these articles is that the authors seem not to have taken the time to familiarize themselves with WP:STYLE. As a result, they tend to produce articles that don't take an encyclopedic tone, and that contain formatting oddities, "notices of originality", lack of categorization, and other things that appear to be a result of transferring class reports directly into Wikipedia without significant changes.

I have done a small amount of work on cleaning up any particularly egregious style problems, and have tried to direct the authors of problem articles to WP:STYLE. However, I think it would be helpful if the people at Utrecht that are responsible for this project make sure that all of the people contributing thoroughly familiarize themselves with the Wikipedia house style, and WP guidance on writing good articles. It would also be helpful if the authors of existing articles could be encouraged to go back and clean up the articles they have created.

In summary: I don't want to see the method engineering articles completely removed from Wikipedia. But I think that the Utrecht group needs to do a lot more to make sure that the articles they are contributing are suitable for Wikipedia in terms of both content and style. And I think that the rest of us can help by fixing style issues where we see them, and working to modify or merge articles that contain inappropriate or duplicated content. --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:14, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Apropros of this comment, the article Test_management_approach has been on cleanup tagged since April 2005 (I've been working my way through these). Anyone have any suggestions about what to do with this one? Kaisershatner 12:56, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I've tried to clean up the leader a bit, but I don't really know enough about TMap yet to provide a good overview. I've also tagged the (rather large) section that talks about testing in general for merging into Software testing. Beyond that, I'm not sure yet. Perhaps any further discussion would be better held at Talk:Test management approach. --Allan McInnes (talk) 16:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Beland

This project is definitely creating a proliferation of subarticles related to things like Information Technology Infrastructure Library and PRINCE2. The level of detail is too high for an encyclopedia, and they are full of how-to information. I think these contributions would be excellent for a Method Engineering Wikibook, which would have many advantages, including that of not needing to set up an entirely new wiki. To be properly integrated into Wikipedia, I think a lot of the content should be summarized much more briefly - probably one article per standard. More importantly, material social and technical context needs to be added to these articles to make them more useful to readers not already familar with the subject. The Utrecht team members should have the expertise to do that, and I'm sure such contributions would be quite welcome. -- Beland 23:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The level of detail on, say, Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is way, way, way, way too high. It could be 2 paragraphs and still fully reflect the social relevance. Notability is not even established (how many organizations claim to have adopted this?). All these Utrecht articles should be transwikied into a separate wiki. Tempshill 07:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
As I have pointed out above the Utrecht group is not the originator of some of the most important material. ITIL, UML, CMM, and related standards are notable; anyone involved in large scale IT management would concur. (Simply reading the last year's worth of major IT publications would provide evidence - I think there is a degree of expectation of basic familiarity with IT.) There are some Utrecht articles (e.g. Meta-Modeling Technique) that should be eliminated, I agree. The approach we're discussing with the ITIL material is to take all the detail and split it into new articles, decoupling these practice areas from ITIL specifically, as ITIL did not invent them. We will then have a suite of articles characterizing the major issues of large scale IT management.Charles T. Betz 12:08, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
If anyone would concur, it should be easy for you to back up the notability claim with some actual figures on this. Tempshill 22:04, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. That is not a required criteria. Do a Google search on ITIL and you will see plenty of evidence of its notability.
Figures such as you suggest are at best lagging indicators, and academia is not currently funding their acquisition. The publishers of ITIL do not care how many people use it, so they have not commissioned any surveys. Corporations are in any event close-mouthed about such matters - probably my central objection to your line of thinking. There are some (probably inaccurate) figures available from the commercial research firms, but I am avoiding citing them here due to non-verifiability (costs $). Charles T. Betz 00:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Have to concur with Charles here. There are some very valuble and highly significant topics covered here, however there is far to much detail. I think it's significant that the main web site for ITIL manages to describe itself in simple plain english in about a tenth of the copy. I would support the bulk of the content being moved to its own wiki, with summaries left for the main topics. For example PRINCE2 need only warrant single page here saying what it is and how it came about. The pages in this project have to much detail about how PRINCE2 is actually applied which has resulted in unnessary bloat. PRINCE2 is also copyright. At the level of detail presented here there must be some danger of infringement.
In terms of notability ITIL is now the basis for British Standard BS15000, and International Organisation for Standardisation ISO20000. Does this help?--FredThwaites 23:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
There's no danger of infringement of copyright unless the editors are directly copying significant quantities of text from the original document(s). I doubt they are doing this, although I haven't seen any original documents so couldn't compare them to be sure. JulesH 07:32, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additional comments

I just came to this page because I am compiling a directory of the WikiProjects, saw this one was being discussed for deletion, and wanted to know what the status of the project is. I've read the articles in question and the above discussion, and am not entirely certain of what should be done. I agree that several of the articles are written more like business manuals than encyclopedia articles, and that several of the points made relate to things I understand only basically, if at all, even after reading the articles. However, Wikipedia is not paper and there is no real reason to delete them simply because the articles deal with subjects which are of rather specialized interest. Certainly, they do contain some valuable information, even if much of it is almost purely theoretical and/or has no specific real-world application yet. I guess my opinion of the best thing to do would be to maybe contact the developers of the project and express our reservations about some of the existing content, and that we might be asking some other editors (maybe the Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and Economics) to review the articles and rewrite them so that their content is more in keeping with encylcopedic standards. I would of course be interested in what any other parties might think of this proposal. Badbilltucker 14:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)