Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Foswiki

I am appalled by the deletion of Foswiki from Wikipedia. I have just come to read upon the controversy surrounding the fork and find the page gone. Have the editors not realized, that the Foswiki/TWiki fork was one of the most noteable forks in 2008? That Foswiki is noteable because it is one of the rare cases in which the project leadership was left by their project community?

It seems like another case of senseless Deletionism. Sad.

C.Oezbek (talk) 12:10, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I wonder how many and what kind of mentions are needed to build notability

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10078682-16.html

would be the most obvious one.

I presume that this discussion page would be a good place to colate such a list so that _When_ it reaches the needed point the topic can be created.

User:SvenDowideit —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:10, 15 February 2009 (UTC).

Best to do it in your own userspace, I think. Don't forget that significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject are what are needed. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:02, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

You can ask an admin to restore the article to your user space, if your intention is to work on it. As to sources, generally two independent and reliable sources that mention the topic, not just in passing, but with substantial examination, will suffice. The cnet mention above, which is indirect (foswiki isn't actually mentioned, but a link on the page ends up displaying the foswiki home, isn't very helpful. Give it some time. If the article is restored to your user space, it should be okay there as long as there is an apparent intention to eventually put it back, and you can put a link to the page on this Talk page so that others who are interested can help. Good luck. If any assistance is needed dealing with flak, which can sometimes be encountered, ask me on my Talk, I may be able to help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs) 00:39, 25 February 2009

Hmm - I've explicitly come to wikipedia to try and determine the state of the twiki fork. Very annoyed this was deleted. Do not approve. Elwell (talk) 19:39, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Solution?

I don't understand why this article was deleted. If it contained any useful information at all (and from the comments here it looks like it did), it should have been merged into TWiki. Just because an open source project forks doesn't mean Wikipedia will treat the various branches in separate articles; in fact, we tend to discuss related topics together in a single article if that helps avoid duplication and aids understanding.

I guess that the AfD discussion became polarised because the participation of many new editors raised red flags with the AfD regulars, causing them to see this as a battle with evil forces from outside Wikipedia. And the new editors didn't understand our normal processes well enough to spot this way out, or felt it wasn't desirable.

I believe the following is the right way forward:

• Since the fork happened recently, it's unlikely that notability of Foswiki can be established at this time. It may be best not to waste too much time on this now.
• The bar for discussing Foswiki prominently in TWiki is much lower: You need to establish relevance of Foswiki for TWiki (nothing to do here as it is obvious), and you need reliable sources that discuss the split. Unless someone at the TWiki article tries to "defend" it against too much discussion of the split, this is unlikely to be under much scrutiny. Of course you shouldn't overdo it by hijacking the TWiki article and making Foswiki discussion more prominent there than discussion of TWiki.
• An interested user should ask an admin to userfy the Foswiki article.
• Then the Foswiki material can be added to TWiki. As part of this, the redlink Foswiki at the end of the lede will be replaced by Foswiki, indicating that "Foswiki" is an alternative name of the article.
• Finally, Foswiki can be recreated as a redirect to TWiki. I believe (and if someone more experienced knows I am wrong, please correct me!) that that shouldn't cause any notability-related problems.

This outcome is actually better than keeping the Foswiki article would have been:

• We are more likely to get input from both sides, and therefore neutral point of view, about the split if we have a single article for both projects.
• Foswiki is best described in relation to TWiki. It doesn't make sense to have two articles each of which describes the features of the respective wiki. It's much better to treat the features common to both in a single article, and the to discuss the differences.
• Once the TWiki article has become too big, or the projects too different, so that it no longer makes sense to treat both wikis in a single article, I am sure there will be enough reliable sources to fork the article.
• All of this may mean that there will be no infobox for Foswiki. But I am confident that there will be workarounds for this and any similar problems.

Executive summary: The mistake was to think that the TWiki article must be forked merely because the TWiki project has forked. Wikipedia doesn't work that way. Until Foswiki has enough coverage in reliable sources, both projects need to be discussed together under TWiki.

Ownership issues of TWiki: There seem to be ownership issues at TWiki. It should be easy to deal with them, since Peter Thoeny is the owner of the TWiki trademark and we have a conflict of interest guideline and a conflict of interest noticeboard for dealing with such cases. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)