Talk:Usenet Resource Downloader
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Tedickey, you tagged this article as straying from a "neutral point of view", however, you didn't point to anything in particular. What about it would need to be changed in order to be neutral in your opinion?
- I tagged it as a conflict-of-interest issue, noting that aside from a handful of people who appear to be all developers of the program, it's not satisfying the notability requirements for a WP-topic. A quick google now doesn't show that's changed. Tedickey (talk) 23:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
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- Well, you inserted a tag which said, in part, "It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view." I am assuming that you would not insert a tag with which you did not agree. So if you doubt the neutrality of the article, what about it would need to be changed in order to be neutral in your opinion?
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- As to notability, even notable software projects, such as xterm for example, frequently fail to achieve significant coverage in publications such as The Washington Post, The Times of London, and The Associated Press (as per notability and reliable sources guidelines) and are not suitable subjects for scholarly research. But this is due to their nature and not lack of notability.
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- It seems to me that an encyclopedia should be helpful to its readers. In reading the article Comparison_of_news_clients while searching for an open source NZB client, I found it helpful that Usenet Resource Downloader was listed along with a link to its article. The article did not appear to me to be biased although it was tagged as possibly being so. But if it is, then wouldn't the best solution be to fix it rather than delete the whole thing? That is why I asked you, the tagger (Tedickey), what you found to be not neutral and what could be done to fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.254.40.143 (talk) 09:58, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
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- While I will readily admit that I have little experience editing Wikipedia articles, it seems to me that you are conflating neutral point of view guidelines with those of notability. I don't believe they are the same thing, are they? You, Tedickey, stated "To be neutral, there should be some evidence that multiple sources of information have been used to construct the topic." Unless I missed something in the neutral point of view guidelines (quite possible), I didn't see anything about "multiple sources" being needed for neutrality except to represent conflicting viewpoints. This article, however, only seems to be presenting cut and dry facts about the program and no opinions. That is why I find it difficult to see justification for challenging it on the grounds of neutrality. As to the facts, unless the facts presented on projects own project page are alleged to be inaccurate, I find it difficult to imagine in general a more authoritative source. If you wish to make such an allegation, could you please be specific?
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- While it does appear to be true that at least one of the program's own authors (Styck) contributed to the article he did so openly (although as I understand it he really should have also left a note on this page identifying and explaining himself). If someone not related to the project deleted the article and then recreated it exactly as before would that satisfy your authorship objections?
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- On the question of notability I explained my position above. Due to their very nature, software programs are much less likely to mentioned in the popular press (as per notability and reliable sources guidelines) than other topics. For example, I could probably find many reports in the popular press about who some popular celebrity was rumored to have been seen having dinner with this weekend, but I don't think that would make it notable for an encyclopedia. Likewise, just because the press fails to report on a program would not seem to not make it not notable. The example I used was xterm. I searched on all three of The Washington Post, The Times of London, and The Associated Press (because they are specifically used as examples in reliable sources) and found no mention of xterm on any of them. Would you then conclude that xterm is not notable and its article should be deleted? I wouldn't because I don't believe that the general reliable sources guidelines are necessarily appropriate for programs.
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- I see what you mean about someone previously deleting the notable tag without any explanation. Like I said, I'm no Wiki expert but shouldn't there be a specific explanation here that justifies the deletion or addition of such tags by the person doing it? That doesn't seem to have been the case with this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.254.40.143 (talk) 16:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
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- "At least one" what are you talking about? And by the way, I don't appreciate the insulting "do a little reading" remark. You questioned the article's neutrality but have refused to identify any specific non-neutral statements in it. Then you tried to justify that by conflating neutrality and notability. And then you started hurling insults. Also, what's wrong with a program being on SourceForge? Many very popular programs are hosted there. But now that you mention it, Usenet Resource Downloader happens to be on Freshmeat also. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.254.40.143 (talk) 02:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
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- It's in the history (your tone is lacking in civility, as well as your intentional digressions - it would be nice to be discussing this with someone who took the time to do it properly). Back to the point - of course it's on Freshmeat, as well as a few other places where its developers have found that there's a free way to advertise their program. Tedickey (talk) 10:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
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- Hi! I am not a wikipedia-expert, so I had no idea that I should have elaborated on the discussion page that I am also a developer of the application. In my defense, I believed it was obvious enough as my wikipedia-username is the same as the developer-name :) To the subject at hand, notability and conflict-of-interest: I agree that notability might be an issue as the tool is relatively new and not many people have heard of it. Partly, this is (as said before) due to the nature of software applications. As URD is used to satisfaction ([1] [2] [3]) and downloaded almost a thousand times according to the sourceforge page alone, I think it is justified to have its own wikipedia page. Furthermore, according to the urdland.com statistics, an average of 10 users per day are directed there from this article, which would seem to indicate that at least they think the article useful.
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- But the issue is lack of notability. A thousand downloads is miniscule, considering the size of the audience. Probably most programs advertised on freshmeat do that well. From your comment I assume that all should have WP topics if their developers choose to write one. Tedickey (talk) 00:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
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- On conflict-of-interest: A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor. As said before, there is (as far as I can tell) nothing but dry facts in the article, the source of which is a developer (how reliable can you get ;)). As said before, the facts are identical to what is stated on the urdland.com / project sites. The aim of an individual editor (me) would be what? To fake features so to get more users that will then abandon the software as it doesn't do what it promised? Seems far-fetched to me. What should be done to resolve the conflict-of-interest issue? The only solution I see is to wait until a wikipedia admin uses URD to verify the claims made in the article. As URD, as a binary usenet downloader for linux/bsd, has a small target audience, this will probably take quite a while. On the other hand, the user reports (see links above) do not discuss missing features, which would be expected if that was the case. Clearly that is an indication that the information is reliable? Styck (talk) 10:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
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- Not exactly: if it's not notable (there are many examples of people writing a WP topic to advertise their product, without providing evidence of its notability - that is a conflict of interest no matter how dry and purely descriptive the advertisement is). Rather than arguing about it, spending some time given your special knowlege of the topic to find suitable proof of notability would be a better approach. Tedickey (talk) 00:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
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- Hmmm. Could you try to elaborate/explain your first sentence? If I leave out the part between brackets, the sentence is incomplete. And the part between brackets doesn't make sense, you're arguing that (in this case) notability equals conflict of interest. Surely it would suffice to have the notability tag alone, as proving notability automatically disproves conflict of interest. Also, I explicitly asked you how to prove notability, even tried to do so with concrete details, sadly you keep repeating the same lines but never answer that question. Please try to be constructive in this discussion (telling people to 'read the history' or 'do a little reading' for example is not and borders on incivility). Styck (talk) 09:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
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- There are two questions. Regarding the first sentence: quoting from the guidelines:
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Adding material that appears to promote the interests or visibility of an article's author, its author's family members, employer, associates, or their business or personal interests, places the author in a conflict of interest.
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Using material you yourself have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is notable and conforms to the content policies.
and of course the section on Self-promotion. What I see here is that the material has to be notable before the conflict of interest is resolved. The two features can be independent (if the material is notable per se, but the author is presenting it in a skewed fashion, or if some non-involved person presents non-notable material – there are a lot of the latter cases which come to mind). Tedickey (talk) 19:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
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- The second question is harder - quoting again
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This page in a nutshell: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be notable.
Reading further, it is stated that notability is not temporary, and that Wikipedia:Independent sources should be cited. Someone for instance who's not writing bug reports (or patches) for your program is a potential source. The guidelines don't mention computers other than "web content", but the common thread through all of the guidelines is that there must be someone independent of the author who's easily identified ("reliable") and making informed but disinterested comments. Citing packages made by independent distributors (on the basis of their user requests) could be helpful, I suppose. No blogs (they're volatilte rather than reliable). It's natural to assume that an active developer is looking for discussion of a program, to head off complaints about it (developers who don't do that, don't produce notable programs ;-). So presuming that you've identified those discussions and independent packages, then that's some material to cite. Reviews would be nice - but comments on Slashdot aren't notable. Perhaps that gives you some ideas. Tedickey (talk) 19:31, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
