Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TidalCycles

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. Geschichte (talk) 09:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TidalCycles[edit]

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Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 11:27, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 11:27, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Non-notable music software, poorly sourced and with no substantial assertion of notability. Orange Mike | Talk 01:48, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, besides, there's some clear COI concerns, the article has been mainly written by Yaxu (its author). I don't know if this is the right place, but I think we should take a closer look into other algorave articles, most of them are plagued with COI concerns, really bad references, and are mostly non-notable, for example: Slub (band), Alexandra Cardenas, Joanne Armitage, Fluxus (programming environment). Uwsi (talk) 03:52, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears you are placing a a DELETE vote. Please check the proper coding on my vote below and place a new vote or revise your line.Chelokabob (talk) 02:40, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Chelokabob: Formatting a keep/delete/merge/etc. opinion is not required per WP:AFDFORMAT; you can encourage others to do it, but not demand it. Also, those are not votes. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 16:33, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that TidalCycles is non-notable music software, as it is used by professionals in the music industry and is used to produce serious electronic computer music. It was recently featured as the primary tool of choice by nearly 100 performers at a recent 2-day electronic/computer music event. I think there is a gap between how the software is represented on the Wikipedia article page versus how widely it is used in practice. I'm not sure I understand all of the work required to support my claims on the article page but I think contributions can be made to address the concerns here. --Kindohm (talk) 20:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears you are placing a a KEEP vote. Please check the proper coding on my vote below and place a new vote or revise your line.Chelokabob (talk) 02:40, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm the original author of the software, and have made some edits to the page in the past, sorry if I crossed the line. However I've just checked and looks like references removed as 'CoI' weren't added by me in the first place, so should probably be reinstated. I added suggestions for further references to the article talk page. Yaxu (talk) 23:25, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears you are placing a a KEEP vote. Please check the proper coding on my vote below and place a new vote or revise your line.Chelokabob (talk) 02:40, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, PhD student working on computer music and teaching electronic/computer music to undergraduates in France. Tidal is definitely not a non-notable music software. Tidal is a very well known program in the field of computer music, creative coding and open-source softwares. It is very often used for teaching live-coding and music programming in public workshops, etc... I just added some references to the page, and have planned to include more references coming from research papers, various european/american newspapers, etc... There should definitely be a section mentioning music/composition softwares inspired by TidalCycles as well. BuboRaph (talk) 09:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears you are placing a a KEEP vote. Please check the proper coding on my vote below and place a new vote or revise your line.Chelokabob (talk) 02:40, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Kindohm and BuboRaph: I see that you are both new editors so here’s a short explanation. "Notable" is a Wikipedia-jargon term that does not mean interesting, worthy of note etc. but rather "has been noticed". More precisely, it is demonstrated through sources that simultaneously (1) deal with the topic at length, (2) are independent of the subject, and (3) are reliable (= have a reputation for fact-checking). See WP:GNG for the detailed wording.

Some software could be very widely used yet still not notable. In fact, it is very hard to find good sources for software notability, because online search hits will contain tutorials/documentation (failing (2)), passing mentions of the type "musician X uses this tool" (failing (1)), and forum (e.g. stackexchange) / blog posts (failing (3)), which will pollute the search result and may lead one to conclude that good sources do not exist because they are buried on page 27 of the results. For instance, Overleaf was extremely famous among LaTeX users by 2017/2018, yet the article only exists since 2019 and had some trouble getting accepted.

So, the bad news is that your current arguments are insufficient to keep the article. The good news is that you are familiar with the software and thus you might be able to find good sources easier. The ideal stuff would be reviews in outlets with some editorial control, possibly from the specialized press about music or music software (not sure what exists there).

(I have not searched for sources myself at this point and thus express no opinion about the article.)Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 11:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to add an important point: that the software is used in some research paper, or even in many research papers, is irrelevant because that would be a passing mention (failing (1)). However, a review paper looking at which tools are used by researchers, surveying researchers about why they use TidalCycles compared to others, etc. would be a useful source. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 11:14, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tigraan:Thanks, that's helpful. Just picking up on the point of research papers, it's worth noting that this isn't technical software like LaTeX used as a tool, but creative software to make music. The papers referencing it will therefore generally be writing about it in the kind of way that you describe, rather than using it, and there are seemingly hundreds at least mentioning it to go through. I'd also point to the software-specific notability criteria. Yaxu (talk) 13:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep A google search brought up many other sources and I have added a few. It appears to be a very popular app used by electronic musicians as well as for educational purposes.Chelokabob (talk) 02:36, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The nominator doesn't seem to have looked for sources to try to improve the page before nomination (see {{WP:BEFORE}} and Notability_(software)#Nominating_for_deletion). Others have since done this and established notability. I do think the article could be improved, though. (coi: please note that I am the author of this software) Yaxu (talk) 10:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Hello. I was made aware of this deletion request. I want to join other people who have rejected the (to my knowledge unfounded and wrong) assumption that the software is not notable. I am practitioner, scholar and expert in the field of computer music, and I can confirm the notability - the meaning of which has been described as "has been noticed" - of TidalCycles. This is a well known software for a particular genre within the computer music community. I would like to add, for the record, that I am personally not involved with the AlgoRave community, so consider this a statement from somebody observing this somewhat from the outside, which I guess constitutes one way of "has been noticed". TidalCycles is probably as well known as other software in the area such as Sonic Pi. Besides, I have been working on conference committees and selection processes for applicants in research projects, and TidalCycles is a software frequently used by people whose work I see. In conclusion, it would be useful for Wikipedia if deletion requests were issued from people familiar with the topicality. Sciss-echt (talk) 19:46, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Sciss-echt: I was made aware of this deletion request. Would you mind (1) telling us who made you aware of it (in general terms: "colleague", "friend" etc., or Wikipedia username, but not actual names), for transparency purposes; and (2) tell that person that most processes on Wikipedia (including this one) are not votes, in that the strength of arguments is more important than the number of persons who made them. In particular, your personal knowledge of TidalCycles and its use in given community is worth very little - if you read carefully what I wrote behind "has been noticed" and the links from there it says we need published sources, not oral tradition.

There is not, and never will be, a criterion of "topic familiarity" to make edits, requests for deletion etc. The main argument against such a process is that it cannot guarantee simultaneously that articles about quantum mechanics are under the control of physicists but articles about astrology are not under the control of astrologers. See also WP:IAC which I would wager represents a fairly consensual view among Wikipedia editors. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 16:30, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tigraan: its use in given community is worth very little. How is use of a given software / musical instrument worth little? What else legitimizes it? What makes Sonic Pi notable and TidalCycles not? Is it because Sonic Pi is backed up by Cambridge and built-in Raspberry devices? What makes Sytrus notable if its use isn't important, is it the fact it is developed by a huge company like Image-Line? You could argue its innovative and open approach to FM synthesis in combination with it's use of additive synthesis is what makes it notable, but there are tons of innovative softwares that are clearly not notable because they aren't used widely. TidalCycles is both innovative (See this paper from the Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X or this one by yaxu himself, yeah I know, COI) AND used widely, surely not as widely as FL Studio or any DAW, but it's one of the most used softwares in livecoding music, as mentioned above, next to Sonic Pi and SuperCollider. If you look at the TOPLAP Calendar, the only current centralized calendar for algoraves, you will find it hard to find a general-language algorave that doesn't include Tidal. I'd go even further and say Tidal IS the most popular livecoding language used by musicians in Latin America and many other regions where the media appeal of Sonic Pi and influnce of its "sponsors" per se (lacking for a better term, english isn't my native language) like Cambridge and Raspberry aren't as important. Yes, Sonic Pi is even recognized and taught by goverments as an introductory tool to programming, even in latin america, but it's not what most artist use. No, we don't have any prepared statistics and polls to show you how TidalCycles is widely used in numbers, because the livecoding community in general doesn't think in those terms (neither do most open source communities). I could point out that the Tidal Club has 1525 users, Sonic Pi's in_thread has 1886 users and SuperCollider's forum has 1184 users as of now. Still, if we get super academical and such, notability is clear from it's use and recognition in multiple papers and publications as shown by other commenters and by yaxu in the talk page. Tidal is even featured in Pop 2 (mixtape) in the last track (Track 10 (Charli XCX song)), a huge mainstream release even considered by Pitchfork as one of the best albums of the last decade. This is even highlighted in the original review. TidalCycles is also notable for its community value inside the algorave scene, for example the Tidal Club organizing one of the biggest virtual algoraves of the last year. Also Tidal being influential for many other livecoding enviroments such as FoxDot, Gibber, etc. --Ritchse (talk) 00:19, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ritchse: I think Tigraan meant that use of software isn't worth much in terms of wikipedia's technical definition of notability. Tidal does meet that definition in my view, the page now just needs fixing up. Before it was a bare stub of a page, now it's still a bare stub of a page, just with some statements and references saying how notable it is.. Yaxu (talk) 00:46, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Many good things are not notable, many bad things are notable. (The topic might be notable regardless of that exact argument.) Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 15:42, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Although previously thinly sourced it is now well referenced and is clearly a notable work. Lame Name (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep WP:HEY case per Lame Name's comment above. RoseCherry64 (talk) 22:07, 23 January 2022 (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.