Jump to content

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mersenne Twister code

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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. I'm not an expert on licensing, but you might want to verify that the attribution in the new github repo is still appropriate. After deleting this page, the link to this article is going to break. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:49, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mersenne Twister code (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs· FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Wikipedia isn't a code repository. Should we have a bunch of articles entitled [[<Insert name of widely used software> code]]? No, we shouldn't. Pontificalibus (talk) 15:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete per nom. Wikipedia is not a code repository, the code is not notable of itself, and the article isn't cited. If there was anything to say here that wasn't better said already in Mersenne Twister then I'd say redirect, but the title isn't a plausible redirect anyway, and if the code wasn't at the target (as it shouldn't be), the redirect would also be misleading. So delete is my !vote. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:30, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral. I am the creator of the article "Mersenne Twister code". As stated in the edit summary at creation, the code was simply copied from the article Mersenne Twister; it was then deleted from that article. I wanted to remove the code from the article Mersenne Twister, because I believed that the code cluttered up that article. Copying the code into a new article seemed to be the easiest approach, but I have no opinion on whether Wikipedia should include the code. Ergo, I am neutral on the proposed deletion.  FlagrantUsername (talk) 17:53, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 23:20, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 23:20, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOT: Wikipedia is not a code repository. Code is another language than English, and this is the English Wikipedia not the Python or C or whatever encyclopedia. Not useful to people who wish to read this, and not the right way to share code with people who wish to use shared code. And to the extent that it is not a copyvio, it is also original research. Removing it from the Mersenne twister article was the right thing to do, but it should have been removed, not just moved elsewhere. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:52, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or re-integrate into the main article. "Code is another language than English" is not a valid argument because mathematical equations are also another language than English, and could you imagine a Wikipedia where all math articles had to use only English? That being said, pseudocode is often more clear than mathematical formulae when it comes to computational algorithms, and the main MT article is sorely lacking a (pseudo)code example now. Ymgve (talk) 14:01, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
About pseudocode, the article Mersenne Twister previously included this. The pseudocode was removed on November 20th;[1] the edit summary for the removal says this: "unsourced - readers wanting code can avail themselves of the external links given at the end of the article". I believe that the article benefited from including pseudocode, but I also understand the concern with lack of source, and WP:NORFlagrantUsername (talk) 16:32, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This is a really nice approach. I have put a link to the repository in the "External links" section of the article Mersenne TwisterFlagrantUsername (talk) 14:57, 23 November 2017 (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.