Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/JAMWiki

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2013 February 5.
For an explanation of the process, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.

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. All "keep" opinions conflict with WP:V#Notability and must be discounted. As Whpq says, the inclusion of any topic requires significant coverage in independent reliable sources. Opinions that conflict with the longstanding community consensus about this can't be taken into consideration. Sandstein 11:04, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

JAMWiki[edit]

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There doesn't seem to be any evidence of notability for this wiki software, and according to its article it's only in use on a few dozen websites. Yaron K. (talk) 02:53, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I think it is one of the most popular FOSS Java based Wiki engines, known between users that look for such a solution. WikiMatrix is not WP:SPS because it cannot be freely edited by anyone, same as DMOZ is not. The opinion published by the non affiliated end user is an independent opinion (imagine we would only allow Mac an Linux users to write about Windows!). Audriusa (talk) 10:50, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. If you want to delete JAMWiki, why not delete Mediawiki? JAMWiki has the same audience and targets. Only difference it's written in Java. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.135.147.45 (talk) 14:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC) — 84.135.147.45 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

I can think of at least two other differences: the number of mentions in notable books and press (0, apparently, vs. hundreds), and the number of wikis using the software (around 30, vs. thousands or tens of thousands). Yaron K. (talk) 16:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As the software's author hopefully it isn't considered WP:COI for me to comment, but JAMWiki gets about 1000 downloads a month [1] and is used on far more than 30 sites - mostly it is used on non-public facing installations for documentation or development purposes. Obviously it is far less popular than Mediawiki, but suggesting it is only being used in 30 installations is incorrect by multiple orders of magnitude. -- Wrh2 (talk) 16:24, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're definitely free to comment here. The number of usages is ultimately the less important number than the number of notable references, but it's still interesting. Do you have any proof that JAMWiki is in use on thousands of wikis? Obviously, not everyone who downloads some software also installs it. Yaron K. (talk) 18:20, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't track installs so most of the evidence for total installations is speculative, but JAMWiki is included in Liferay [2], and the vast majority of bug reports and help requests come from non-public-facing wiki installations (see [3] and [4]). Total downloads from Sourceforge over the project lifetime are close to 80,000 [5], so combining that with downloads from other sources (such as [6]) and assuming even a very small fraction of those are actual installs gives an install base of a couple thousand. Additionally, the project has also proven popular with researchers, and I've handled a significant number of help requests from students using it in their projects (examples: [7], [8]). -- Wrh2 (talk) 18:55, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - The number of installations is not really relevant to Wikipedia's inclusion guidelines. What is needed is signfiicant coverage in independent reliable sources. I don't see that in any of the sourcing in the article and I can find none when I conduct my own searches. -- Whpq (talk) 17:17, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The tool has the base of independent users that are quite frequently mentioning it on the web and is listed in several specialized reviews focusing on Java based Wiki software. Audriusa (talk) 14:25, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That shows that the software exists and is in use. But that is not sufficient to meet the inclusion guidelines. -- Whpq (talk) 14:33, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:08, 23 January 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, AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 00:06, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I found a number of mentions of use of the program in scholarly articles, but nothing in depth. There is a mention of it at cmscritic.com but it isn't in depth. There is some evidence that an article on "Collaborative trust evaluation for wiki security" might be in depth, but it is behind a paywall. Sadly, many worthy and popular open source projects don't get a lot of coverage in independent reliable sources. JAMWiki might be one of these projects that falls through the cracks. Mark viking (talk) 05:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It's true that reliable sources reviews and discussions are lacking, but that is perhaps to be expected for this field. The number of mentions in books and on Scholar convince me that it is at least widely used for academic purposes and per the ieee.org paper that Mark viking found, considered along with better-known free wiki software. There is some (old) coverage here. Also, if we can bring ourselves to ignore the guideline that other stuff exists is not an argument, and look at the lists at Comparison of wiki software and List of wiki software, it would seem very inconsistent to delete the article about this wiki while keeping the others. Mcewan (talk) 10:57, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That guideline is there because it makes sense - if articles were kept just because there were other articles that were even more worthy of being deleted, very little would ever get deleted. (Though in this case, I think all the other wiki engines with their own articles on Wikipedia happen to have at least slightly more of a claim to notability than JAMWiki.) c2.com is a wiki (though of course the first :) ). So that seems to just leave a single academic paper, which may or may not say anything substantial about JAMWiki. Yaron K. (talk) 17:30, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I admit it might be borderline, but still think that it is sufficiently widely-used to be notable based on (admittedly brief) but numerous references in Books and Scholar and on the activity on its own feedback pages provided by the author above. Mcewan (talk) 11:01, 29 January 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.