Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IText (2nd nomination)

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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. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:23, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

IText[edit]

AfDs for this article:
IText (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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There is no evidence of notability. Not a single independent source is referenced, and searches fail to produce any significant independent coverage. For example, the first page of Google hits consists of the following: pages on the web sites of the company that produces iText (itextpdf.com) and of its author (www.lowagie.com); this Wikipedia article; a download site; Twitter; a forum post by Bruno Lowagie, the creator of iText; and a page about something completely different called "iText", unrelated to the subject of this article. The article has been tagged for notability and independent sources for 16 months.

The article was previously taken to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IText in June 2009. In that AfD an editor wrote "I think the fact that a book has been written about this ... is enough to establish notability of this library". Other editors uncritically accepted this, and the discussion was closed as "speedy keep" after less than 24 hours. However, the book was written by Bruno Lowagie, who is both the creator of iText and one of the owners of the company that produces it. (See http://itextpdf.com/staff/bruno_lowagie, which says "Bruno Lowagie is the original developer of iText. He and Ingeborg Willaert are the founders/owners of the iText companies.") Writing a book about your own product does not make it notable. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:15, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A weak keep, but a keep. The two editions of the book do speak to the subject's notability, although it would be better if the book and the articles discussed the subject in academic terms rather than act as "how to" manuals. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:14, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can you explain how writing and publishing a book about your own product indicates notability? Not according to my reading of the notability guidelines, nor according to my idea of common sense. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:48, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Notability established by book, [1] and [2]. These are all from the Further reading section of the article. I don't understand why the nom does not consider these to be independent. ~KvnG 18:10, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You don't understand why a book written by the owner of a business about that business's product is not an independent source? In that case, I am at a total loss to imagine what you think the word "independent" means. As for the two pages that you link from the "further reading" section, I was not regarding those as "references", since they do not support any of the content of the article. Nevertheless, I suppose I should have mentioned them. They are both more or less "how to" pages for developers who may want to use iText. They are some indication that iText has received some attention, but they fall far short of the kind of substantial coverage required to establish notability. They are, in fact, typical of the sort of thing which can be found about thousands of obscure software products, for which that someone somewhere has written a page telling readers that they can use that software if they want to. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:48, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I missed your note about the book above and didn't look carefully enough myself. Definitely not independent. I agree that the other two sources I cited are not particularly strong. This puts it on the fence for me. I still can't support deleting this but withdraw my Keep position. ~KvnG 14:47, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]


  • Keep IText is one of the primary PDF-libraries (do your homework!). If the current article is not independent enough, then contribute to it, instead of asking for deletion. Notability: Googling on itext currently yields 945000 results. If you compare that to many of the software listed on List_of_PDF_software then I do not understand your problem, unless you consistently want to delete all those as well. How many of that software have published books? It seems the independent publisher thought this open source package was notible enough to publish about it. Article improvement: yes, delete: No. 78.20.18.96 (talk) 09:42, 14 October 2013 (UTC) — 78.20.18.96 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • keep Added some more references to the article. I think a library like iText is notable enough to stay on — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raivenblade (talk • contribs) 13:11, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep The proposal for deletion was posted in the exact week Deloitte would announce the ranking of the Fast 50 in the Benelux. If the moderator had taken the time to read the blog, he would have known that iText was selected by Deloitte as one of the fastest growing Technology companies in the area. As iText scored high in the competition (with a growth percentage of 2625% in 5 years), it was mentioned in several newspapers, see the recently introduced press page on the site. You may not be able to understand what the newspapers say (they're in Dutch), but you'll surely recognize Bruno Lowagie in the pictures. You may want to read the about page, along with some of the testimonials. Remember that the people at iText are engineers, not marketeers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.247.169.83 (talk) 16:52, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep Using Google books, it was fairly easy to find a number of books by other (independent) authors, among others Rod Johnson, who created the Spring_Framework, that discuss iText as one of the notable PDF libraries. I've added five to the "Further Reading" section. IMO the argument that "notability of iText" can't be established by a "book about iText" because the author is also the "creator of iText" shouldn't be used by somebody who isn't a published author. Getting a book published, especially by a publisher such as Manning, isn't easy. Publishing a paper book is a costly operation. The author and the subject of the book need to be endorsed by independent people from the industry, otherwise the book won't be printed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.184.132.60 (talk) 06:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC) — 37.184.132.60 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • keep This page should be kept. iText is *the* PDF library in the Java world. It has existed for a very long time now and is good enough to assure that there is virtually no competition in Java PDF libraries.

It is a good library as proven by all the other software which is built using it, including many other open source projects like jasper reports, BIRT, flying soucer etc. If you look at stackoverflow, there are 6500+ questions about iText. Markmail contains 12500+ messages about iText... Joachimvda (talk) 18:41, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia Ohloh's global statistics [are] used to identify [the open source projects] with the most extensive continuous revision control histories, and Ohloh states that iText has a mature, well-established code base. These are facts from an independent source that is accepted by Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) is an algorithmic software cost estimation model, and based on this model, iText has an estimated cost of 300 man years (source: commits between 2001 and 2013). An anonymous mod has asked for more references. These were provided. Another anonymous mod has asked for inline references from reliable sources. These were provided. One can not claim that iText is not notable, without at the same time claiming that Ohloh, COCOMO, PDFtk, Rod Johnson, Matt Stephens,... are unreliable sources, algorithms, people, unless one is unreliable himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.247.187.130 (talk) 23:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My name is Bruno Lowagie. I'm the original developer of iText, the author of two books about iText, and the CEO of the iText Software Group, consisting of three companies. I'm not familiar with all the rules on Wikipedia. I know that I'm considered being partial as far as the iText page is concerned. I understand that Wikipedia has a strict policy about contributions that smell like a conflict of interest.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Wikipedia allows people who wish to remain anonymous to decide whether or not a page on Wikipedia should be deleted. I didn't know it was Wikipedia's policy to put product pages on trial by an anonymous judge without granting the product owners the right to defend their product. If I understand correctly, I can't even raise the suspicion that the judge is partial.

Am I even allowed to post my arguments? I don't know, but for what it's worth, here they are:

  • First argument: "a book written by the owner of a business about that business's product is not an independent source." That would be true for books that are self-published. Anyone can pay to get his book printed. Anyone can start writing an ebook. However: not anyone can get his book published by a renowned publisher, let alone getting permission to write a second edition. No publisher will want to publish a second edition if the first edition wasn't a best-seller.
  • Second argument: there's a message on top of the iText page on Wikipedia asking to "please improve" the page. Instead of marking the page for deletion, why didn't somebody at Wikipedia do the effort of searching Google books for references to iText? I see that some books were already added, I know more books that have chapters about iText (an SAP manual, Hadoop in Action,...), but can I add them? Or will that be perceived as a conflict of interest? Which books are accepted? Are authors such as Rod_Johnson_(programmer) authoritative enough?
  • Third argument: "searches fail to produce any significant independent coverage," but there are over a million hits when one searches for iText on Google. Isn't it normal that the first couple of pages refer to me as I'm the authority when iText is concerned. Since when is being an authority on your products a bad thing? Why are the thousands of other hits to pages written by independent sources being ignored? For example James Gosling's blog, isn't James Gosling trustworthy enough as an independent source?
  • Fourth argument: if one reads the iText page, one finds links to a number of other pages, such as for instance the Pdftk page. PdfTk is nothing more than an obsolete version of iText compiled to an executable using the the GCJ GNU Compiler for Java. The few external references on that page also count as references for iText (since PdfTk is a wrapper for iText), yet only the iText page was marked for deletion and not the PdfTk page. The Windward_Reports page is waiting for reliable sources since December 2009, yet that page isn't marked for deletion in spite of the fact that there's a reference to it on the iText page. Is iText being singled out?

I am NOT a troll. If you have a problem with my arguments, explain. If you can't explain, please remove the "marked for deletion" message from the iText page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruno Lowagie (talk • contribs) 15:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC) — Bruno Lowagie (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Thanks for making your case. You certainly are allowed to so long as you disclose any potential conflitc of interest, which you have. I have changed my opinion back to keep based on your argument for independence of your publisher and the new book sources added to the article. [3], [4], [5] and [6] all appear to be reliable sources and there is significant coverage of iText in these sources. ~KvnG 21:36, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 15:07, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Since the nomination, a good bit of work has been done on the the article and a number of sources have been added. The PDF Hacks and Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development books are both in-depth reliable sources with authors that are as far as I can tell independent of the iText creator or company. The articles Generate PDF files from Java applications dynamically, Dynamically Creating PDFs in a Web Application and Tools of the Trade, Part 1: Creating PDF documents with iText all look like relaible sources that treat iText in some depth. With multiple in-depth reliable sources, notability, per WP:GNG, has been established. The article itself has problems with promotional prose, but fixing this is a surmountable problem, per WP:SURMOUNTABLE. A notable topic and surmountable article problems suggest keeping the article. --Mark viking (talk) 19:42, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please indicate which parts sound promotional so that they can be removed or changed. Note that I'm hesitant to remove inline citations that sound promotional, as that would reintroduce the issue raised by BDD. Can the issues that have been fixed be removed from the page? The article no longer relies on references to primary sources. Inline citations have been added, but it's not clear if the work that has been done is sufficient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.242.20.93 (talk) 14:54, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is still a good bit of work to be done to get rid of promotional stuff and convert to an encyclopedic style. For instance,
  1. Google Trends shows web searches for iText and iTextSharp dominate all other open and closed-source competitors. from the lead was clearly promotional; I deleted it.
  2. It was a complete rewrite with new examples. With more than 7,000 copies sold, it's the second best-seller about iText. is promotional. The citation for the second sentence was to sales figures at the iText website--most definitely a primary source and unreliable.
  3. The Features sections reads more like a sales brochure than a neutral description of the software.
  4. The third paragraph in the lead looks promotional for the books.
--Mark viking (talk) 16:44, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  1. OK! From the history, I see that this part was added by Duff Johnson who is a board member at AIIM and the vice-president of the PDF Association. He's also active in different ISO committees for PDF. He has a long record of Wikipedia contributions in the field of PDF, so please take his view into account even though he didn't cast a vote on this page in his own name (he may have cast his vote anonymously).
  2. OK! I removed With more than 7,000 copies sold, it's the second best-seller about iText. I don't think anyone will mind.
  3. I'm not sure how to edit this. The description matches the actual features and it's much shorter than the functionality description on the iText site.
  4. That's a literal quote from a review. I shortened it. It's no longer a literal citation, but it sounds less promotional, and less awkward, for instance This second edition should have been changed into The second edition.
Regarding 3: who should edit the features list? Is this a task reserved for a Wikipedia moderator? Or is this item listed as a TODO for somebody at iText? I'm the original developer of iText. The feature list that is currently shown on Wikipedia, reads like a rehash of what I've written on page 5 of the second edition of "iText in Action." I could rewrite that part. I could add a couple of graphical elements, such as the architectural schema or the Create, Adapt, Maintain, Inspect circles, but I don't know if this would be considered as promotional. I would appreciate some clear instructions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruno Lowagie (talk • contribs) 09:25, 21 October 2013 (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.
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