Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of photo stitching software

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 delete‎. Doczilla _{Ohhhhhh, no!} 02:58, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison of photo stitching software

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Everything is either unsourced or reliant exclusively on primary sources discussing individual pieces of software to paint a picture that no source explicitly makes AKA performing improper synthesis. Additionally inherently violates WP:NOTDIR. Compare Dynluge's argument at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of XMPP server software, which I find convincing to this day and appears to be just as relevant. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:38, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Photography, Software, and Lists. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 04:14, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nominator and WP:NOTCATALOGUE. Ajf773 (talk) 04:48, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It is full of WP:SYNTH. Orientls (talk) 06:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge Should be called list of photo stitching software, it listing valid information about things on the list in the various columns, with some columns that perhaps shouldn't be there. But the vast majority of things in this list article do not have any articles for them. Category:Photo stitching software shows 17 total. Those could easily fit in Image_stitching#Software. Dream Focus 21:54, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Ultimately, Wikipedia is a website that combines features of many other types of websites; did Diderot's Encyclopédie have a list of LOST episodes? Of course not, but we do. Yes, yes, WP:OMGWTFBBQ, I'm well acquainted with all of the policies in question; but at the end of the day these policies exist for a reason, and the reason is to create a website that meaningfully informs its readers. For sixteen years this article has done that, quite well. If we look at policies like WP:NOT you can see that they were not intended to simply purge articles on the basis of not being "serious enough" (i.e. WP:NOTCHANGELOG was specifically written to include articles consisting of Android and Chrome version histories). If this is cruft, then God bless cruft. jp×g 🗯️ 11:40, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a discussion about sourcing. What did anything you wrote have anything to do with sourcing? HyperAccelerated (talk) 19:44, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is a discussion about whether an article titled "comparison of photo stitching software" should exist on the English Wikipedia.

What kind of "sourcing" do you think we need for the claim that Adobe Lightroom is proprietary and not open-source? Do you actually think Adobe's own website is incorrect? What basis is there to think that?
The topic of comparing photo-stitching software is obviously notable and many people care about it. Here are some articles about it that I found after searching for about ten seconds:
Coleman, Alex (September 21, 2023). "Best Panorama Stitching Software for Photography". Photography Life.

"Best panorama stitching software: Retouching Forum: Digital Photography Review". www.dpreview.com.

"What is the best photo stitching software to use in 2024? | Skylum Blog". skylum.com.

"8 Best Photo Stitching Software for Making Panoramas [2024]". www.movavi.com.

"10 Best Photo Stitching Software in 2024 (Updated)". expertphotography.com. November 8, 2021.

"Top Photo Stitching Software for Breathtaking Panoramas". Cole's Classroom. December 7, 2020.

"9 Best Photo Stitching Software To Create Panorama Images". carlcheo.com.
People who are on the Internet looking for information (i.e. the people that this website actually exists to serve) are obviously interested in this subject, and it is not only possible but very easy for us to maintain high-quality well-sourced information for them. We do not need a long-form thinkpiece from The Atlantic to do this: we just need to cite reliable information about photo-stitching software. Adobe's website is a reasonable citation for how much Adobe's software costs. The thing being demanded here -- that somebody find a New York Times article or something listing how much Adobe Lightroom subscriptions cost, and then cite that instead of Adobe's website -- is unnecessary, unreasonable and likely impossible.
The idea that we should destroy this information is both inexplicable and infuriating, and when people have told me they no longer enjoy using Wikipedia as a resource, about eight times out of ten it happened after watching large amounts of neutral reliably-sourced material disappear forever because somebody found it aesthetically distasteful. jp×g 🗯️ 00:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I don't think there's much of a discussion to be had. Most of the sources you listed are either not credible or don't make any meaningful comparison between software offerings, as they are essentially listings. It's notability is not obvious at all to me, and that's nothing to say of the original research in the original article, and to say that we only need to find citations for one small portion of the article is a very rose-tinted view. I'm sorry to hear that you're infuriated by this AfD, but this article should be deleted. It's not about aesthetics, it's about policy. HyperAccelerated (talk) 16:00, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is about policy -- WP:SPS and WP:ABOUTSELF are policy. Again: do you actually think Adobe's own website is incorrect? Why?

Of course Adobe's website is not a reliable source for "Lightroom is the best and easiest-to-use software ever", but it's a reliable source for "Lightroom has a stitching mode for fisheye lenses", which is indeed what we're citing to it.

These sources -- again, they are from the first page of a Web search, I could certainly find more if I actually went to the library -- are obviously not canonical listings of the best photo stitching software packages, they're evidence of this being a notable subject that people have a consistent and strong interest in. If you really want evidence that evaluating and comparing types of panoramic stitching software is a subject that's been given proper scholarly treatment by serious people with graduate degrees, I can also do a quick publication search.
Mehta, Jalpa D.; Bhirud, S. G. (May 31, 2011). Pise, S. J. (ed.). "Image stitching techniques". Springer India. pp. 74–80. doi:10.1007/978-81-8489-989-4_13 – via Springer Link.

Montabone, Sebastian; Pohlmann, Frank; MacDonald, Brian; Andres, Clay; Anglin, Steve; Beckner, Mark; Buckingham, Ewan; Cornell, Gary; Gennick, Jonathan; Hassell, Jonathan; Lowman, Michelle; Moodie, Matthew; Parkes, Duncan; Pepper, Jeffrey; Pundick, Douglas; Renow-Clarke, Ben; Shakeshaft, Dominic; Wade, Matt; Welsh, Tom; Markham, Jim; Moore, Ralph, eds. (May 31, 2009). Beginning Digital Image Processing: Using Free Tools for Photographers. Apress. pp. 205–234. doi:10.1007/978-1-4302-2842-4_9 – via Springer Link.

Benzar, Julia (May 31, 2012). "Hardware and Software for Panoramic Photography". www.theseus.fi.

https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/752941/dunguyen_thesis_final.pdf?sequence=2

Montabone, Sebastian (July 27, 2010). "Beginning Digital Image Processing: Using Free Tools for Photographers". Apress – via Amazon.

Soler Cubero, Oscar (September 2, 2011). "Image Stitching" – via upcommons.upc.edu. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

https://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:jiafm&volume=36&issue=1&article=015

Gillmore, John; Dodd, Bucky (June 27, 2011). "Panoramic Virtual Environments for eLearning Applications". Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). pp. 951–956 – via www.learntechlib.org.

Song, Huaibo; Yang, Chenghai; Zhang, Jian; Hoffmann, Wesley C.; He, Dongjian; Thomasson, J. Alex (March 31, 2016). "Comparison of mosaicking techniques for airborne images from consumer-grade cameras". Journal of Applied Remote Sensing. 10 (1): 016030. doi:10.1117/1.JRS.10.016030 – via www.spiedigitallibrary.org.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39670392.pdf

Weitoish, Daniel (January 1, 2012). "From the Canopy: An Arborist's Perspective" (58) – via repository.upenn.edu. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

jp×g 🗯️ 05:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Those articles, ironically, describe how to stitch images without the use of the software programs listed in the article. Those sources might look authoritative, but they only cover image stitching as a general technique, for which we already have an article for. In fact, the existence of these sources are a reason to delete this article, because it shows that people tend to avoid buying expensive subscriptions for photo stitching programs in favor of DIY solutions. And again, that's nothing to say of the mountains of original research and synthesis in the original article. Tunneling on one specific use of one primary source misses the bigger picture that the nominator and two other delete votes have painted. HyperAccelerated (talk) 14:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: The original research could be hypothetically cleaned up, but we'd need reliable sources that make meaningful comparisons between photo stitching software in order to preserve the article. I've found a couple self-published articles, but nothing that I would consider reliable. HyperAccelerated (talk) 19:46, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Doczilla _{Ohhhhhh, no!} 03:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Image_stitching#Software: until better sourcing is found. Owen× ☎ 11:34, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 03:54, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, there are suitable sources for this, but they simply haven't been applied properly in the article. Any comparison made by an editor is basically not valid; the correct approach is to summarize the comparisons made by the reliable sources, and to explain the criteria used by those sources. Tables (with columns each cited to one of the sources) would likely be the best way to proceed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:30, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Which would be effectively WP:TNTing, and thus argue the current content here should be deleted, right? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: My concern here is that this type of article is completely beyond the scope of Wikipedia. One, detailed listings of technical capabilities of different software packages are best suited for PC Magazine or similar publications. Two, it focuses on one aspect of photo editing - image stitching. Then we would have detailed articles on "Comparison of color-correction software", "Comparison of photo restoration software", "Comparison of image animation software", etc.
Given that any software platform is constantly being revised this would also become a high-maintenance article. Imagine, if in 2001, if we had an article titled "Comparison of dial-up internet services". What relevance would detailed comparison charts of CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online have for today? Blue Riband► 23:43, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Somebody obviously did a lot of work compiling all this data but I'm seeing primary sources: product home pages, product descriptions, tutorials, and product descriptions. WiIkipedia is not a direcory nor is it a guidebook. So for those three reasons my vote is Delete.Blue Riband► 15:41, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:NOTCATALOGUE EncyclopediaEditorXIV (talk) 18:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Too much work has been done here but it is simply not encyclopaedic enough. Georgethedragonslayer (talk) 15:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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.