Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ESC/Java

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 no consensus. A merge discussion can continue on an article talk page regarding merge potential for this article. (non-admin closure) NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:04, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

ESC/Java[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

unmaintained research software, fails Wikipedia:Notability_(software)#Inclusion Ysangkok (talk) 16:28, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:50, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:50, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Being unmaintained is not a good reason to delete it per WP:NTEMP. The paper "Extended static checking for Java" has some 1,300 citations in GS, so I think this is notable--not necessarily for the software itself as a usable artifact, but for its ideas. Finding some WP:GNG-type coverage for academic stuff is always a challenge, but ironically even more so for highly cited stuff because there is too much material to go through. Someone not using his real name (talk) 21:29, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Cormac Flanagan has a h-index of 39 [1] and this is his most cited paper, so if all else fails, someone can create a WP:PROF article for him and merge this into a research section there. Someone not using his real name (talk) 21:41, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly merge with extended static checking, because the theory and the most noted implementation/application are by the same person/group. Someone not using his real name (talk) 00:57, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Spec Sharp has a comparable number of GS-cites though (~1K), so if ESC/Java is merged to extended static checking, the same should probably be done with Spec Sharp. Someone not using his real name (talk) 01:00, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think [2] and especially [3] work towards satisfying WP:GNG for ESC/Java (the latter in particular has relatively extensive coverage of ESC/Java by different authors). Yet another group wrote a comparison paper on arxiv/CoRR, but it seems that piece wasn't published anywhere (else) [The first author of that paper wrote a tool (CPBPV) that somewhat competes with ESC/Java, although CPBPV is not for Java programs. Their actually published paper about CPBPV also contains some of that comparative material (less though) [4]]. I couldn't find any in-depth coverage in books intended for non-researchers, but if we're going to cover academic compsci topics, this seems among the notable ones. What I said about merging it with extended static checking is still worth considering though. Someone not using his real name (talk) 01:27, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note how extended static checking was created by a contributor (that only edits this and the article on ESC), that, if you Google his nick, leads you to a StackOverflow page with a link to whiley.org, another implementation of ESC. Conflict of Interest indeed. I maintain that maybe 15 people worldwide have ever worked on ESC technology. ESC, being a "collective name for a range of techniques", is about as vague as you can get. If we had articles on every single "collective name for ranges of techniques", we'd have thousands. Anyway, there is a large number of citations, and therefore I think we should merge this with ESC and maybe have sections on ESC/Haskell and ESC/Modula-3 too. --Ysangkok (talk) 12:51, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- I have no doubt a lot of articles on Wikipedia, even many academic ones, are created by COI editors. It's also true that even a large number of academic citations can have little connection with practical/actual use. (For another recent example of academic software AfD see flora-2, where its [academic] users have somehow shown up to defend it. My favorite example of disconnect between citations and usefulness are some wireless mesh routing algorithms. Even the "losers" there [i.e. algorithms that nobody considers using] have thousands of citations, while the "winners" like AODV have tens of thousands even though their practical use is still very limited.) But I think in this case at least the ESC umbrella term has been used by more than one research group, even if there are variations in details. This might sound disturbing for an engineering/compsci topic, but it's actually common in social sciences for authors not mean exactly the same thing by a term. So that's not an entirely convincing argument for getting rid of the ESC page altogether per WP:DABCONCEPT etc. Someone not using his real name (talk) 13:35, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Northamerica1000^(talk) 15:25, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I added many more references. I am against deletion of ESC/Java but I believe, if this should be merged anywhere it should be merged into Java Modeling Language (JML) as OpenJML has been declared as the successor to ESC/Java2 with comments on OpenJML's website like:
OpenJML is a tool set for JML, built on the OpenJDK framework for Java. It is intended a the replacement for ESC/Java2, which is only for Java 1.4. OpenJML is current with Java 1.7u6.

Extended static checking seems highly related but a more generic concept as it applies to more than just Java related languages. 50.53.15.59 (talk) 15:37, 16 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Bushranger _{One ping only} 09:38, 23 February 2014 (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.