Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FORDISC

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. (non-admin closure) Spirit of Eagle (talk) 23:38, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FORDISC[edit]

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Based on results of recent AfD nominations of articles on my watchlist, I am renominating this article for deletion on the rationale of WP:PROMO. Article was created by WP:SPA editor who may have a commercial (or academic) conflict of interest in relation to the edits in the article edit history. I read sources on this topic extensively, and the product is not described in such approving terms as in the article by anyone but its developers in the professional literature.[1] [2] WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 02:15, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk to me 03:31, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I started looking for sources for this via Highbeam, which returned quite a few. Apart from those now referenced in the article, others were pointing towards the critical literature, which is also indicated in more detail in the two Google Books links provided by the nominator. In sum, though, these are indicative of notability; it strikes me that the main concern expressed in the nomination is a lack of balance in the present text? In that case, the need is for either a competently-written and referenced Criticism section to be added to the article, or perhaps a less vendor-specific merge into Forensic_anthropology#Application? AllyD (talk) 18:17, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

- Thanks for the helpful comment: I haven't seen enough discussion of this software in actual print books I have at hand to get the sense that it fits well as a standalone article, but the merger suggestion and looking at the sources viewable online should help produce a balanced, encyclopedic treatment of the topic. The previous editing history of the article involved striking out a lot of material that provided better balance by the article creator, but a merger into the other article would put other eyes on the topic and help ensure balance. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 19:03, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:23, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The software is important in its field--appears to be the standard--and its performance matters and is subject to critique. It is the standard and its statistical methods and its included database are important. Clearly best covered in a separate article, not merged somewhere else. My impression is that this is the far-and-away main software; there are not competitors to discuss in a joint discussion; it is simply clearer to discuss this software and its properties. It's not directly relevant, but I also cannot imagine that anyone is profiting by the software, as it is very specialized. The operating manual of the software itself describes dangers in its usage, from possibility of over-classification. Reliable sources are abundant. Simply this one suffices on its own to clearly establish notability: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/6/849 (note it cites numerous studies using FORDISC. This Wikipedia article is an excellent resource potentially to describe the main software in the field in more detail, and its limitations. An article on this is perfect usage of Wikipedia, is what Wikipedia was invented for! In terms of further development of the article, posting requests to WikiProject Statistics (is there one) or otherwise soliciting statisticians is the way to go. --do ncr am 01:46, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:13, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep — Per the nominator's own links, the topic seems notable, widely used, and deserves an article. There are important NPOV issues with this article that likely stem from COI editing. Most problematically, Sustentacular (who created this article and has very limited editing beyond it, a few others on the topic, and one of the software's author's university) has removed critical information in the past (e.g., [3] although I can't evaluate these particular claims, this always makes me itchy). My strong preference is always to fix an article on rather than delete and that's my preference here too. If consistent massaging by editors with likely conflicts makes this article unfixable I will happily reevaluate my !vote. —mako ๛ 15:32, 20 December 2014 (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.