Talk:EasyChair
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[edit] Speedy deletion?
Hi, I pointed out that this is the most widely used system for managing conferences (not only) in computer science, as confirmed by the statistics on the homepage. Isn't that a proof of notability? --Langec (talk) 11:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
- The guideline on Notability requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." JohnCD (talk) 11:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
- Indeed, but the conferences that use EasyChair exist independently from EasyChair. Thus, justifying EasyChair's "claim" that they use EasyChair would require citing lots of conference homepages and their reference to EasyChair, which I don't consider practicable. --Langec (talk) 11:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Justification of notability
I'll add evidences that some of the most notable computer science conferences use EasyChair to the article, give me a few minutes, please. --Langec (talk) 11:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
- It's nothing to do with notability. WP doesn't usually carry articles that, in effect, simply advertise software whether commercial or freeware. There's nothing about this product to distinguish it from other abstract management software or indeed from thousands of other products. It happens to be very popular but that alone doesn't merit a place in an encyclopedia. andy (talk) 11:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
- I see, but doesn't a large user base justify an article? Why does, e.g., Microsoft Word have a Wikipedia article? One might say, everybody knows Word, and Microsoft is a large company, but actually it's because lots of people are using Word. -- Hmm, it might be more appropriate to compare it with other web-based applications such as Google Docs. --Langec (talk) 11:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
- Now I've provided a scientific paper about EasyChair and related systems; hope that helps. --Langec (talk) 12:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Reasons for stubbing
I've cut down the article into a stub because it's overblown and misleading:
- No independent evidence for any of the claims made about usage and functionality
- Some of the claims made about usage are wrong and misleading - see below
- The article goes beyond what's on the website, for example saying that it's definitely "the most widely used conference management system" while the reference merely says "probably".
- The software functionality is no different from many rival products.
I checked a random selection of "users" claimed by the website for 2008 onwards. About half were unverifiable because the conference is no longer accepting abstracts or abstract submission has not yet started. Of the remainder almost all that were in the field of computing were correct but several non-computing "users" were wrong. For example:
- QUIS 11 - software provided by OpenConf
- VIRSU 2010 - no online submission service used
- IAD 2008 - no online submission service used
- ISCD - no online submission service used
- CPA 2008 - no online submission service used
- AFS08 - software provided by Oxford abstracts
- TPRC-08 - software provided by Microsoft
It looks like the policy of the website is to take any enquiry as a firm order. On this basis we can't trust any claims that are made about this product. Hence the stubbing.
