Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Herbert Schildt

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 keep. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 02:05, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Herbert Schildt

Herbert Schildt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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

Delete The article has four citations, such poor quality as they are and all four of them relate to criticism that the subject is repeatedly complaining about as a BLP violation The criticism is from three (not wikipedia notable) opinionated commentators. Perhaps a list of his notable books it a better solution. Off2riorob (talk) 16:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC) IMPORTANT NOTE: It is not the subject of the BLP (Schildt) who is complaining about the article, it is an editor, User:Spinoza1111 aka "Edward Nilges" , now banned for various abuses and posting from anon IPs, who has decided to be the white knight. Barsoomian (talk) 17:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

That is correct, Barsoomian. I have decided to be the "white knight". But the article was NOT tagged for deletion by me, although it was done in response to my complaints. I don't see where it says that if a man is "blocked" (in my case based on a canard) he loses rights to help wikipedia, unless Jimbo is such a Randroid that my altruism, my white knightery, is itself now evil. I am not primarily trying to help wikipedia, nor even Schildt. I am in fact demonstrating that we can stand up to bullies, whether they are half-educated little programmers like Seebach or convenience store clerks pretending to edit wikipedia.

I was clarifying who was complaining about this article, which is you, not Schildt. I never said you had tagged the article for deletion. Barsoomian (talk) 12:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Delete (please leave this statement alone, since while I did not tag the article, I have brought the BLP issue to the attention of editors who have. If your "democratic" rules mean anything, the Schildt article is in violation of BLP. If your "democratic" procedures mean anything, even a so-called "banned" user needs to be treated with respect based on the issue at hand, which is IMO a serious and long-standing violation of wikipedia's own policy.)

Steve: I accept your change since it appears that will protect my comment from further vandalism by Barsoomian. Editors: please read the "long and 'mal-formatted'" comment which makes the case for deletion of the Schildt article.

Long and mal-formatted comment by user:121.202.78.198 continues inside. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:28, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" - Exodus, KJV The Seebach and Feather posts are clearly polemical. Basically, both went through a Schildt book in one pass trying to find as many "errors" as possible. Both make their own errors, including the false claim that "void main() is not standard C" when according to the C99 standard it is indeed, just not "hosted": it is freestanding standard C. Errors in a computer book's code examples are a somewhat serious matter, rather like errors in commercial software, and to-date no practical method has been found for avoiding either. However, McGraw Hill, like any software or computer book publisher, indemnifies itself through a warranty disclaimer concerning errors. This means that the programmer-reader, to get the benefit out of what are intended, in Schildt, to be representative code snippets, needs to exercise caution, and learn, while typing those code snippets into a particular implementation of C. All computer books contain such errors as a byproduct of the author's human limitations, the production process in which live code becomes dead PDF, and the stability of the particular programming language being discussed. It's easier to err in the case of C, which has never been responsibly standardized and in which aliasing creates instability, to make "errors". As in the case of Kathy Sierra, programmers who are rather aliterate (as is evident from Seebach's and Feather's strange use of "clear" when they call Schildt "clear") tend to be confused by a breezy style and prefer manuals which the mere mortal cannot understand. Seebach, who led the charge against Schildt, confesses to having a radically different learning style in which he is easily confused if something is expressed in a non-literal way. But Herb's intended audience does not learn in this way. They understand, and at times love, the goofy professor who gets a proof wrong, and uses his own mistakes to teach something new. They appreciate a chance to try a code snippet, find that it works wrong, and fix it. Here is wikipedia's own policy: We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high quality sources. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.[2] Not one of the three sources are of sufficient neutrality to be reliable. Seebach starts by accusing Schildt of having written a book with hundreds of bugs (but then presents only twenty in the previous edition of "C: the Complete Nonsense", and only a few more in the next). The bugs turn out for the most part to be artifacts of the instability of C and Microsoft/Linux differences. Feather's document as a copy-cat, drive by shooting emulates Seebach: it's a claim that "this author is bad" with less than fifty examples of why he's bad, most of which are trivia and violation of Linux shibboleth. The ONLINE copy of the Summit FAQs does not even reference Schildt; instead it snarkily refers to a fictional book, with the insider joke that this means "Schildt". The sourcing of the Schildt article is extraordinarily in violation of BLP. Some of the posters below say that "Schildt's friends can post favorable reviews". This however, reminds me of the kangaroo court I was subjected to in 2006 when I was bullied by wikipedia editor amerindianarts; out of the blue one finds one is on Trial. In real law, bringing a charge is considered a serious matter, for a grand jury. Here, anyone can ruin anyone's life by bringing a charge to which the person has to respond. There's plenty of favorable information on Schildt, of course, starting with his sales figures and his adoption as a textbook. But he should not have to stand trial...unless all computer authors must stand trial, such as myself, or Peter Seebach. I can see below that Schildt's enemies would like this review to be a plebiscite. This is however to be ignorant of the law of small numbers. The people who vote to "keep" are too small in number to constitute a plebiscite, and too invested in a pro-Linux outcome to constitute a jury. Finally, this strange matter that a monstrum horrendum, a sock puppeteer, and a ruffian like myself should be also a white knight, and as such, as an Emile Zola defending no friend of his, a Dreyfus-Schildt, should act in such a disinterested way. It is because my own defense against my bullying on wikipedia is futile because snot-nosed convenience store clerks don't like my prose style, having been ill-equipped to read above a low upper bound of complexity. Whilst still being adequately prolix relative to the issues at hand, up to and including the Fascism of Wikipedia, I find it more effective to undo the damage done to a hard working computer author. As a hard working computer author, family member, and member of his community, Herbert Schildt's right to privacy, guaranteed to him by the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution, have been for too long violated by this article. You don't have an article about me, although I'm a computer author. You don't have an article about Dan Appleman, who's written extensively on computers and is a real nice guy. And this is as it should be. Computer authors are for the most part employees of computer publishers who hew closely, as did Schildt, to a marketing plan. They are not Zolas, able to publish their own views at will; they are more like Captain Dreyfus, honorable men and women who try to do their best. Ecclesiastes says "let us now praise famous men, and their children after them". It goes on to say that we must honor men who are invisible, who raise families and work hard at their jobs. If they find they can actually write more than the disorganized hate mail of a Seebach or a Feather, they discover, as I discovered, that they can make a little extra cash writing books about their trade, perhaps to send their children to school. We honor them by leaving them alone, and not dragging their name in the mud. You bear false witness against obscure men when on the basis of the superstitions shibboleths of an unstable programming language, you make their father's name, their sons' name, their wive's adopted name, into a foul word, such as "Bullschildt". Take this article down.

• Keep the author objects because the criticism is negative, but is welcome to add positive positive reviews, if any can be found. To criticize someone's books is not a BLP violation--if one publishes a book, one cannot expect everyone to like it. Extending BLP to this would prevent any discussion of even notable work of notable people--that is, unless we abandoned NPOV entirely, and only printed articles that praised people's work-- WP IS NOT A VANITY PRESS. DGG ( talk ) 16:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

What is left if I remove the uncited? Just the weakly cited opinionated critism. Off2riorob (talk) 17:01, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The uncited has been cited. --GRuban (talk) 05:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Keep His books published by major publishers show he is important. The tone of the article makes him look silly since an insightful reader will understand that it was written for self promotion, but that's not a reason to delete. Kitfoxxe (talk) 17:10, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
• Keep Schildt is a bestsellng author, and the influence of his books, positive and negative, is important. Barsoomian (talk) 17:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

He's only a bestselling author in a techie field. Dan Appleman has written several best-sellers but does not merit wikipedia treatment. Ivan Flores, an NYU professor who wrote a lot of books about early computers, has been totally forgotten.

But it's a very big techie field, and Schildt has sold millions of books -- Boing! said Zebedee 10:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

So has Appleman. But neither Appleman, nor Schildt, nor myself will be on Ophrah Winfrey. Tech books are doorstoppers and boat anchors once past their sell-by date, and the authors work under the control of a marketing plan.

Furthermore, the article was created just to diss Schildt. We know this. This in itself is a serious BLP violation.

Schildt's refusal to comment clearly implies he wishes his Ninth Amendment right to privacy to be respected. Had he gotten into it with Seebach as Torvalds did with Tanenbaum, this would have been a disclaimer of a right to privacy. But Schildt's silence means "please leave me and my family alone".

The Wyoming lawyer Gerry Spence went to court on behalf of a Miss Wyoming beauty contest winner who'd occasioned foul speculation in Hustler. The foul speculation caused her to lose her job and she had to join the Army. Spence demonstrates that she was NOT a public figure just by virtue of winning a beauty contest. Herb ain't gonna win any beauty contests but there's an analogy here: a person who accomplishes something within a narrowly definable field should not be rewarded by being exposed to shame and disgrace.

• The fact that other authors might not have articles on Wikipedia has no bearing on this discussion. -- Boing! said Zebedee 11:52, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
• Tech books are doorstoppers and boat anchors once past their sell-by date, and the authors work under the control of a marketing plan - neither is generally true. "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by W. Richard Stevens is going strong after 18 years (13 on the first edition), as are his network programming books, and the Dragon book spans 33 years on 4 editions (and Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools lived 20 years on one edition). My work shelf also has K&R2 (published 1988) and Harbison and Steele ("only" 8 years old). Good tech book can live to decades, and are not written to short-lived marketing specs. Not that any of this is relevant... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

But: the people who want the article to remain are generally convinced, obviously, that Herb's books aren't "good". Therefore, by their logic, Herb was a run of the mill author, as I am ("Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler", Nilges, Apress 2004). This, paradoxically enough, argues for the article's removal, even if Herb Schildt's rights to privacy and dignity are discounted.

Hope you don't mind me interjecting a comment here - I want to keep the article because I think Mr Schildt is notable, but I *do* think his books are good - I've used several of them in my programming career and have found them very useful. -- Boing! said Zebedee 15:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Certainly, the accomplishment of writing the Dragon Book would merit notice. The crucial test: whether John Markoff, the New York Times' tech reporter, would notice the author/programmer. Dijkstra got an obituary as did Krysten "Simula" Nygaard.

However, Markoff would not recognize mere authorship divorced from extra accomplishment. Aho et al. were Princeton faculty which is distinctive in itself, and have participated at the highest level. Schildt is not a member of the Princeton faculty.

I looked for the Gerry Spence/Miss Wyoming bit. It was Penthouse, and he lost.[1][2] But besides that, you seem to be comparing a beauty contestant not needing to expect that people will write pornography about her to a technical book writer not needing to expect that people will write critical reviews of the books he writes. I'd argue that yes, a technical writer does need to expect critical technical reviews. If they called him resentful and autistic, now that would be over the line. --GRuban (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, a technical author must put up with critical reviews, in, typically, the Awesome Windows Journal of Secrets and Whoopee prior to Amazon...and today, with snot nosed convenience store clerks on Amazon.

But if wikipedia claims to be anything more than Jimbo's Awesome Encyclopedia of Whiz-Bang, a carnival attraction and freak show, it must not, by its own BLP policy, allow itself to be used for the creation of an article written as a container for personal attacks on a private person.

This is independent of the fact that Jimbo, who I regard with the utmost scorn as a buffoon, has created a framework for racist attacks on a hardworking South African restaurant owner (Mzoli's). The logic is the same: if an article can be created about Mzoli's, then I shortly shall expect an article about my favorite Chicago bar, Trader Todd's.

If Herb Schildt can be so singled out as can the owner of Mzoli's, then anytime some gimp doesn't like someone, all said gimpwad has to do is create a seemingly neutral biography of that person, and get his gimp friends to start adding information damaging to a formerly private individual.

In Flynt v Falwell the Supreme Court defined what it means to be a public individual. Miss Wyoming was not, and the Spence case is a legal analogue to Schildt.

You need to fairly apply your own rules about notability. Ask yourself if John Markoff would care about Schildt: ask yourself in good conscience if he'd write an article about the damage done by programmers corrupted by reading Schildt who believe that void main() is "good C". Then give Markoff a call and pitch your story.

After he laughs at you and hangs up, get a life.

There is a real problem about software correctness. In my experience, bugs are often the result of office bullying of programmers told by management to "get it done" and "sacrifice quality", abetted by guys like Seebach, who can't code (as my audit discovered) yet are all too ready to gossip, as Seebach has gossiped, about other programmer's incompetence.

And I am unpersuaded by arguments that I should leave Seebach's reputation unsullied. I have been dragged through the mud on wikipedia because I claimed in 2006 wrt to the Kant article that one cannot write the history of philosophy without doing philosophy, something that Bertrand Russell would agree with but was interpreted as an "insult" by a horde of "editors" that crawled out from under a rock, and into wikipedia, in 2006. I have been called a "kook" and a "moron" by Seebach and as such Schildt's cause is mine.

"Dan Appleman has written several best-sellers but does not merit wikipedia treatment."

Appleman certainly merits wikipedia coverage, as the author of some geek books that were regarded as the canonical texts on their field. The fact that no-one has yet felt driven to write it doesn't rule out the possibility in the future. These books weren't Brooks or Meyer, but they had their place and they were noted for it. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:36, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Please spare Dan. He's a Microsoft specialist and I don't want to see his bio be a target.

Wikipedia's own policy wrt BLP makes it clear that you must be either a media star or a convicted criminal to merit a bio. This is for wikipedia's own protection. I realize that Gerry Spence lost the Miss Wyoming case, but his reasoning was sound. In order to encourage ordinary achievement, we need to make sure that people who do not seek broad media exposure or commit fallacies retain their Ninth Amendment and UN human right of privacy, otherwise those people will sue.

Otherwise, any kid in the news for being admitted to Princeton will be at risk.

I do not know why the policy isn't simply "ask the subject's permission unless she or he is a general media star or convicted felon". I'd hazard that it's because wikipedians, from Jimbo down to the snot-nosed convenience store clerks, have no conception whatsoever of human dignity, having themselves none.

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:14, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:14, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. The uncited information is not contentious and can be sourced, possibly after slight rewriting. For parts of it, sources are/were already present in the article, just not as inline citations. Apart from being one of the best-known authors of programming language books, Herbert Schildt is a member of Starcastle, a group that appears to have an entry in the Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (to which I have no access, unfortunately). While some of the facts claimed about him in the article (before Cirt removed large parts) are not easily verifiable (e.g. that he was the original keyboardist, that he appears on all albums, and the use of Oberheim synthesizers), they are all plausible and not contentious at all.

I would !vote for deletion (as I almost always do) if the subject had asked for deletion. But that is not the case. There is no reason to suppose that Herbert Schildt from Central Illinois = Edward G. Nilges from Hong Kong. Hans Adler 19:50, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

That's correct, Hans. I have never met Herb and I do not use his books. I was somewhat impressed by his early "Born to Code in C" but as a C reference I prefer Harbison and Steele and K & R. However, under the Ninth Amendment of the US Constitution, the dude is entitled to personal privacy and peace of mind as effectively an employee of McGraw Hill under the law, which generally holds employees harmless from bad practice, and which under the First Amendment refuses to have an opinion about the worth of any publication, save for child pornography.

• Keep. The man is "the world's leading programming author".[3][4][5] McGraw-Hill says so, and they're a leading publisher, so a Wikipedia:reliable source. That's not borderline notability, that's Notability with a capital N. There's only one author any publisher says that about. --GRuban (talk) 20:54, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
• Delete Only has low-grade self-published sources - publisher's puffs and poison pen pieces - which are insufficient for a contentious, derogatory BLP. It is our policy that "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately..." Colonel Warden (talk) 04:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

And here I was coming to the review to say that I had sourced every section. :-P. A publisher's puff is not a self published source, by definition, and neither are the C Vu reviews I added. Neither is the C FAQ, since it's also published by a major publisher. It's pretty hard to accept that this is a derogatory BLP when the only criticism is one sentence criticising his books, not him, out of five paragraphs. The main contention comes from a single banned editor; if being occasionally blanked by an editor who was then banned qualified an article as contentious, every Nickelodeon TV star and Disney character article would qualify. --GRuban (talk) 05:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• The publishers promotional copy is both written and published by them and so it's self-published material. The C Vu source is a book review and contains no biographical information. The C FAQ reference is likewise a comment upon a book, not its author. This biographical article seems to be a WP:COATRACK for criticism of particular books, much of which is self-published. When one compares this article with Eric Ely - an article which had far better biographical sources which were actually about the person but which was deleted nonetheless - we see that this article falls far short of what's needed for controversial biographies. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:39, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Something published by a major publishing company is not self-published (unless you argue that Schildt is secretly running McGraw-Hill himself as a complex front?) Yes, the book reviews are reviews of books; they do not question Mr. Schildt's ethics, looks, personal hygiene, or family life, just his books. Which are what he's notable for; highly notable, as the quote says. I can't accept the article is a coatrack when the criticism is one sentence. Neither do I accept it is a contentious article when the contention in question is a claim that technical criticism of technical books is akin to pornography. --GRuban (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Keep. Schildt is well-known among people interested in C. "No judgement" ;-) And Summit and Seebach are notable commentators. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:52, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Neither Summit nor Seebach seem notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. This just seems to be a matter of professional jealousy in a walled-garden community. Private feuds of this sort do not belong here. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Existence of a Wikipedia article is neither a necessary nor a sufficient criterion for notability. And of course, the community of C language experts (and wannabes) is the relevant community for finding comments about C experts (and wannabes). What do you expect, comments from a literary reviewer in the humanities? And C is one of the most popular programming languages ever - it's not as if this community is small by any reasonable standards. Both Summit and Seebs are multiply published and well-regarded authors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:13, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Untrue in the case of Seebach wrt books: he has published only one book. Furthermore, he has revealed recently on comp.lang.c that he has a serious learning disorder which causes him to learn quite differently from "normal" people which disqualifies him from commenting on Schildt's methods. He has revealed that he has taken NO computer science classes and is self-taught as a programmer. He paid his way onto the standards board as a volunteer, and his fame is primarily based on his criticism of Schildt. I have audited his code and discovered that he overuses C idioms and makes newbie errors consistently. — [Unsigned comment added by 121.202.78.198 (talk • contribs).]

Seebach has at least 3 books to his name, and published dozens of articles for IBM DeveloperWorks, see [6]. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

He has written only one by himself. He co-authored the book on unix(r) and was one of a host of contributors to C Unleashed, a not well regarded book. Furthermore, all of these contributions appeared after "C: the Complete Nonsense", so when he wrote CTCN he had no standing. I believe (need to check) that at the time he wrote the first edition of CTCN he was not part of the Standards board, either. Yet, his tyro's document grandfathered all other opinions on Schildt, and became an "Obama birthplace" meme. The number of anti-Schildt references are only citations of this, in a "Malabar Cave" echo chamber.

Notability of the author of cited source is completely irrelevant. NVO (talk) 10:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

But his credibility is. Peter Seebach appeared to be a recognized professional as a member of C99. But on comp.lang.c, he said he paid his way onto the board. He wasn't invited based on a track record, and he divulged this fact only recently under clc pressure. Seebach's "day job" is, as he has freely confessed on clc recently, not programming; it's bug finding and writing shell procedures.

It is true that Seebach has recently published a book on portable shell scripting. However, this gives him no chops as regards C code. Furthermore, I audited, as part of my research, his C code, to find astonishingly elementary bugs.

Furthermore, when Seebach posted a one-line strlen() simulator in C on clc this year, it was obviously off by one. He explained his error by reference to his having a learning disorder. He said elsethread that he has a radically different style of learning from normal people, which puts into question his opinions of Schildt. The nature of the disorder is one in which the learner needs information presented literally, without error or even metaphor. For this reason, Seebach wouldn't be able to learn from Schildt, because of Schildt's breezy presentation of code snippets which do not always port to Seebach's environment (Linux).

Ordinary programmers simply change the snippet and thereby learn. They might good-naturedly josh the prof, but only in recent years have the politics of resentment become so harsh that they abuse the professor for making them work a little.

Nobody ever learned programming by rote memory of The Truth, since programming is a social activity. But Seebach wishes to impose this autistic model on everyone, and for this reason allowed his polemic to be the major source for this wikipedia article.

I find it ironic that in defending one author from attack, you are making a much harsher and more personal attack on another. Did you notice that rather than being the major source for this article, the criticism is one sentence? --GRuban (talk) 12:50, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

You may find it ironic and reprehensible, however, the facts show that Seebach seriously misrepresented his standing, or, the author of the wikipedia article was deceived, and assumed the traditional case: that one who's on a standards committee is invited to that committee on the basis of experience and accomplishment. Seebach has freely confessed that this is not the case.

It is unfortunate that I have to disclose these negative facts about Seebach, but this evil is the result of his initial malfeasance, which was to attack someone by name for practices which work in the Microsoft environment.

Brian Kernighan attacked the practice of including nonworking program listings in 1976, in his early book "The Elements of Programming Style", and when I met Brian at Princeton in 1987, I asked him if he'd offended anyone. He said in fact that the authors he had in mind thanked him.

This was because Brian did not name the authors, and this was general practice at the time. Edsger Dijkstra attacked many people but by describing their practice. He said of APL that it created "coding bums" but no where did he say that Ken Iverson was incompetent nor did he try to make "Iverson" a byword and a catchphrase.

But as it happened, Dijkstra was deeply unpopular and paid the price of speaking truth to corporate power. This I think taught the next generation that it's safer to find someone relatively isolated, and kick the shit out of him as if Schildt was personally responsible for the fact that void main() worked on older C compilers from Microsoft, or the poor design of C.

Rather than go to this length, in January of this year, I sent one email to Peter Seebach requesting that we discuss my issues. This email, according to Seebach himself, was discarded and unread, since he had concluded from my literacy alone that I must be some sort of "Internet kook", since "normal" people on the Internet can't write above a low upper bound of complexity. His self-confessed ADHD may also play a role.

This is why things have come to this pass. It's called defense against aggression and it is a human right, whether self-defense or the defense of another. If I am in Seebach's book a kook and a moron, I may as well be hanged for a sheep and a lamb, and document who he really is according to his own admissions. My purpose remains demonstrating that he has no standing if he cannot submit code without newbie errors to clc and is a self-promoter who has built his reputation through the politics of personal destruction.

• Keep This is a reasonable article - the concerns about sourcing have already been addressed, and could have been addressed by the nominator instead of trying to slide another deletion in. Editors should not let their personal views on BLPs prevent them from the business of encyclopedia building. Weakopedia (talk) 09:03, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
• Keep and improve refs. There are lots of Ghits out there, and Schildt is very well known in his field and has sold millions of copies of his books, so he is quite clearly notable and the article can be properly sourced. -- Boing! said Zebedee 10:01, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Is there really any need to keep deleting the IP editor's opinion, above? Even if he's a blocked user, the closing admin will be able to take that all into account. As it stands, all we have here is an unproductive edit war. -- Boing! said Zebedee 11:14, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Fine. It gets tedious cleaning up his crap anyway. Barsoomian (talk) 11:20, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Keep Author of bad C programming books and an infamously terrible one on C++. Notable at the time as an author (his books were unfathomably popular) and still notable today as an example of bad books on programming. If ref improvement is needed, it's probably time to dust off that old pile of Byte or Dr Dobbs in the back of the garage. I'd hope his entire output pre-dated the mass online web. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:29, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
• Keep the lead alone gave me enough notability info to vote keep, and it seems well cited. SGGH ^ping! 15:31, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Cultivated and literate people never use the phrase "bad book". This is easily shown. If a cultivated and literate person starts to read what he thinks is a bad book, he will not read it, normally, unless he's being paid to review it. But this means that he will have no opportunity that the "bad" book has any value: whether in the case of a novel that resolves apparently insoluble contradictions, or a mathematical book that proves a striking theorem at the last minute.

Herb Schildt's books, of course, are neither. But the basic reasoning applies. If his books suck then the initial reviewers (who now appear to be Summit and Seebach working independently) probably did not do due diligence to realize that Herb was writing for a Microsoft audience, not them or their friends.

In Seebach's case, whether in 1997 or today, he seems to pick up the book and root through it without diligence for what he thinks are either errors (some of which are based on poor design choices in C) or violations of his tics of style. His tirades therefore have no place in a biography of a living person, because they are NNPOV.

In all other cases, the reviewers show a distinct bias against Microsoft, whereas the promotional puffery, of course, is biased against Schildt.

In no case is this about a genuine or important scholarly dispute. The article violates BLP and needs to be removed.

Nobody case about the ill-digested opinions of a bunch of little computer programmers.

• Keep - The only criticism is in one sentence which is very well sourced. It doesn't even say what the criticism is which I think is quite remiss. Otherwise it needs clean up so it can be read by people who aren't familiar with C, which can be fixed! Obviously notable. No reason to delete. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 16:34, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
• Delete. In making this determination, I ignored all the overheated rhetoric above, and focused on one straightforward point: this is not a biography. There is virtually no biographical information here, just a list of books he's written, and a single aside about a band in which he played. If this article is kept, it should be moved to Writings of Herbert Schildt, to more accurately reflect its actual subject. *** Crotalus *** 19:28, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

My "rhetoric" is "overheated" because the article is not only poorly sourced, and cannot be properly sourced (because outside of material based on Seebach's NNPOV articles, there is no authoritative analysis of Schildt's "errors"), but also because it harms Schildt.

I realize that in this Randroid environment, convenience store clerks interpret Rand's ban on "altruistic" conduct to also be a ban on common decency (which is something that not even Rand intended). Therefore, claims that Schildt is being harmed have in this toxic environment be translated into "the wikimedia foundation might get sued".

Otherwise, if one makes reference to common decency, one is "Shrill". One is creating Drama. Like a girl.

So: apart from the poor sourcing, and the impossibility of finding a NPOV source, the article threatens wikipedia and the foundation. As if I care: but there it is.

I asked Brian Kernighan via email if he cared to intervene. He replied that he doesn't wish to, of course. But NO material on Schildt can be found that does not originate with Seebach's polemic, and all of Schildt's opponents wish to keep C for Linux use exclusively, which is NNPOV. Therefore I ask, again, that the article be deleted.

• Keep. Deletion is often a good idea for problem articles about people who are only just WikiNotable, but Mr Schildt is very WikiNotable, having written so many books and sold so many copies of them. Surely we can bring the article into conformance with our rules and keep it in that state. CWC 09:50, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• Regardless of how many books he's sold, my concern is that we do not have adequate third-party sources whose subject is Mr. Schildt himself, rather than his works. Even many of the sources on his books are questionable — why are we citing Peter Seebach's self-published website? Since this article is ostensibly a biography, doesn't that violate WP:BLP? Alternatively, as suggested, we could give the article a more accurate name and change its focus. *** Crotalus *** 15:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

• Seebach's site documents Seebach's opinion of a book, and that's how it is cited, in the Reception section. It is not a source for any biographical facts about Schildt. The only thing we need to be sure of is that it really is by Seebach. Do you doubt that? And as for the bio, most of that comes from Schildt's various publishers, who aren't going to say anything bad about him, but there is no reason to think that what they do say is untrue. Barsoomian (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

• Articles should primarily be based on reliable, third-party sources. If most of the biographical info on Schildt comes from his publishers, it isn't independent or third-party, and we shouldn't have an article at all. As for the Seebach information, WP:SPS says "Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources." This seems to me to be in violation of that provision. *** Crotalus *** 18:19, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Remember, WP:BLP (which this part of WP:SPS is part of) applies equally to all articles, not just those called biographies. So if you're writing about a person in an article about his book, you can't use a self-published source from an expert. The converse also holds. If you're writing about a book, in an article about a person, you can. Or are you arguing any criticism of a book is actually a criticism of the author? If so, then you seem to be arguing we basically can't use any self published expert opinions of any TV shows, movies, cars, computers, telephones, computer programs... --GRuban (talk) 20:36, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm still not clear on why Seebach should be used as a source. Is he "established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications"? (Serious question, not rhetorical - I had never heard of him before reading this AFD.) We don't seem to have an article on him (and probably shouldn't). *** Crotalus *** 20:30, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Seebach did time on the ANSI C committee. Short of being either K or R, that's about as "established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications" as it gets. Also Clive Feather took a dislike to Schildt's book (with copious notes thereon) and he's pretty WP:RS on the topic too. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:56, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

• Keep. Well sourced article. Nominator's concern has been addressed.--Sodabottle (talk) 19:43, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• Keep. BLP concerns have been worked out. Content disputes are not relevant to the author's notability - which has been established. decltype (talk) 09:30, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
• Delete This is not a biography, and its sourcing is quite weak. E.g. the lede sentence says 'McGraw-Hill calls the subject "the world's leading programming author"', sourced to cover blurbs of subject's own books. WP:V requires sourcing independent of the subject and that hardly qualifies. Andy Dingley's assessment of the subject's books sounds plausible to me. I never read any of them but I've looked at a few and they seemed basically serviceable but undistinguished (non-"notable" to use the local jargon). Remember in the pre-web era there were a LOT of computer books that were just slapped together and sent to the printer, the way web sites go up today. The most respected C book is probably Harbison and Steele's "C: A Reference Manual" (originally from 1984, several newer editions) and it was always praised for its accuracy (although it had mistakes). The mass market books like Schildt's just weren't comparable and didn't get much notice. I just don't see this as a useful article in its present state and I don't see how to turn it into one. It's about stuff that was barely notable even when it wasn't decades in the past. If it matters, I looked at Nilges' blog rant about the article and the rant is just plain crazy. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 07:44, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Schildt was distinguished above other such writers by his name being immortalized in the Jargon File. Though this has been deemed too scurrilous to mention in the article page, it does speak to his notability. Barsoomian (talk) 19:23, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- Pcap ping 18:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. The sources presented are easily enough to show notability. I don't agree with the various comments above that claim that this is not a proper biography. The subject is notable for his writings, so they are, quite rightly, the main focus of the article, in just the same way that our articles about politicians, sportspeople and entertainers write about their work rather than their favourite foods or inside leg measurements. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

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.