Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of commercial failures in 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. The "keep" opinions are limited to arguing that the nomination occurs too soon, but do not rebut the arguments advanced for deletion. Inclusion policy is concerned about the merits of an article, not about the timing of nominations; the "keep" opinions are therefore not taken into consideration. Sandstein 05:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

List of commercial failures in software[edit]

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This article was created because of this CfD nomination ending in a "listify" result. I think this is going to be a difficult page to maintain, since most software ends in commercial failure. However, if someone wants to create a comprehensive equivalent of List of commercial failures in video gaming, I would be happy to withdraw this.-- Mike Selinker (talk) 04:22, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, unspecified inclusion criteria, no sources. JIP | Talk 05:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It's too soon for deletion: AfDing a page THREE MINUTES AFTER CREATION is ridiculous, particularly when the page was created based on the consensus of an earlier discussion. It could and should be improved (by adding inclusion criteria and sources, per List of commercial failures in video gaming), but AfD is not for pages that could/should be improved. Wikipedia is slow, tag and come back in a while! --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:11, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:09, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~Comment~~. Delete. At this stage, the article seems to have rather unclear inclusion criteria. Is Virtual Case File a commercial failure, even if it failed? It was a custom-made suite for the FBI, not a commercial product. What of Windows ME or Windows Vista, which probably did make money for Microsoft, but which most end users avoided if given a choice? - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:53, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - No coherent inclusion criteria. Inherently uncompletable list — MOST software will be commercially unsuccessful. Unsourced and laughably incomplete list. Carrite (talk) 16:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete A case could be made for keep based on WP policies. However the whole concept does not really seem very useful. If there was a list of book publishing failures it would include most books that have been published, or music CD's. It also seems to depend on too much OR to establish that something was a commercial failure. Maybe this is an example of "I don't like it," but I don't. Kitfoxxe (talk) 21:28, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for now'. I share the nominator's concerns that it will be hard to define objective and non-arbitrary inclusion criteria, but having created the list as the consensus outcome at CFD, we should at least give someone a chance to make a go of it before deleting it. (Disclosure: I was one of those who !voted at CfD to listify it).
I suggest that the article should be tagged for improvement, and reviewed in a month or two. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:59, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. We can know when movies or video game systems fail in the market; they have published budgets and published returns. This is not the usual or even the most frequent case for "software". We have a piece of US government vaporware here. We don't have major Microsoft operating system releases that were critically panned and fell well short of their expected rates of adoption. I'd happily make any deletion without prejudice, but so far the subject seems rather shapeless to me. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 04:35, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it is rather shapeless, and I'd probably go further than that, and say that it's hard to see how it could ever take shape. I was just trying to see if there was any way of following through on the spirit of the CfD decision to listify rather than delete, but I have to admit that I can't see one. Probably best to just deletion without prejudice. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:59, 24 April 2012 (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.