Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foswiki

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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 have closed this early due to the new accounts that were showing up. It seems there was canvassing off-site to keep the article. Articles for deletion pages are not a vote. --Deskana (talk) 02:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Foswiki[edit]

Foswiki (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Article and software fork of TWiki. The original software maybe notable but just because the community forked does not mean the new software inherits the notability. There are no significant third party reliable sources that I have found. 16x9 (talk) 20:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete Another article for a brand new software project that has not established notability in any way, and the fork is hardly controversial. §FreeRangeFrog 21:19, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is an important software fork which took the majority of developers away from TWiki. --Milovlad (talk) 01:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)— Milovlad (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep Considering the history, I'd suggest that the TWiki page has less notability than the Foswiki page - the fork having been forced by the takeover of the open source project by the founder's company. Given that all the open source developers - (now at 37 commitors) have moved to the fork, leaving only the founder and his employee as active core developers, I would disagree that the 'fork is hardly controversial'. Additionally, it seems that the TWiki project is doing everything it can to suppress the existence of the fork - most users have never heard of it, nor of the issues surrounding it, and when told pretty much switch as quickly as they can. - Sven Dowideit — SvenDowideit (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Keep Foswiki is a professionel high quality software which has been released as a stable version 09 Jan 2009. We are in progress upgrading TWiki to Foswiki at my own working place Motorola. Sourceforge statistics show an average of 100 downloads per day and growing already 3 weeks after first release. Foswiki will be in the top 20 of Wiki software within long. It makes little sense to delete the article. It also make no sense to delete the TWiki article. Kenneth Lavrsen —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:31, 5 February 2009 (UTC). — KennethLavrsen (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep TWiki project was stalled for a long time and after the fork Foswiki evolved very fast. It has a very active community and contributors. I personally know many users that are migrating cause they have no faith in TWiki and its remaining developers and cause they think Foswiki is the future. Personally I'm involved with Foswiki and much more motivated than I was with TWiki. So I think Foswiki article is absolutely relevant. Gilmar Santos Jr. —Preceding undated comment was added at 02:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC). — GilmarSantosJr (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep I think there should be not even a discussion started about that. Foswiki could be also thought about as a rename, instead of a ork. 99% Of the working community members have left TWiki and joined Foswiki. There is no need for Foswiki to establish. It has at least all features included in TWiki with some new one, and a lot of new one coming. As 99% of the people which have been build TWiki are now building Foswiki, its clear that Foswikis quality is at least as good as TWikis. Looking at both project activities you look at a "2ManProject" ( TWiki ) and a hole, community drive developmemnt of right now 37 developers of Foswiki. Nearly all plugins are maintained on the Foswiki site instead of TWiki. So this one ist just a try of trolling. To give a fact about how Foswiki looks like, this are a list of registered ( mostly real name ) users : [1]. I dont think there should be any doubts that this project is interesting for a lot of people. There is no single reason to register on this page expect: Contributing. Everything except editing can be done anonymous. So i think this is quite a good picture how many people are actually contributing. -- Eugen Mayer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.66.151.218 (talk • contribs) — 88.66.151.218 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Comment I do not have a conflict of interest. I have no ties to Foswiki developers nor to TWiki.net. In the interest of full disclosure, I do maintain a TWiki 4.2.3 site as a minor part of my job, and I did notify the Foswiki developers of this Deletion notice because I thought they needed to know. So, let's call this "massive conflict of interest" all my fault and move on. The split between TWiki.net and the majority of the current developers is significant and notable because it represents a change of licensing. The Foswiki software is notable because it likely would not exist without a dedicated group of open source developers who worked on the TWiki software in the first place. Foswiki appears to have an active community and a viable 1.0 release. The topic is notable because the fork and the project name "Foswiki" is directly referenced in the article pertaining to the TWiki software. --Milovlad (talk) 06:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC) — Milovlad (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep I expect one of the two projects to die in the long run. In any case the TWiki-Foswiki story alone is notable in any respect. Even when TWiki died its history will be interesting for any Open Source project out there building an environment of "Community & Commerce". Besides that there is a clear market trend for users to "upgrade" to Foswiki instead of to the next TWiki release for three reasons: (a) all core developers of TWiki are now on Foswiki, (b) Foswiki has already become a better product and (c) Foswiki has all of the momentum on its side while TWiki.org is a dead place. I can't see why such a viable Open Source project like Foswiki will be less notable in the terms of Wikipedia than a dead project like TWiki. Give it at least another year before deciding to delete Foswiki, TWiki or both. -- Michael Daum 5 February 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.70.40.96 (talk) 08:29, 5 February 2009 (UTC) — 88.70.40.96 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Delete No evidence of notability. The Keeps seem to be all from new users unaware of our policies and guidelines and especially WP:Notability. dougweller (talk) 09:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Per nom. Afterboth (talk) 12:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I'll admit right away that I use this software at a large University so there is likely a conflict of interest. Keeping that in mind. Foswiki is a rename of the original fork which was titled nextwiki (copyright issues prevented that name from sticking). Nextwiki received considerable coverage at the time of the fork. TWiki the original project has as well. Here are a few articles to help along the notability argument [2] [3] [4] [5]. I understand a large user/developer base is not enough to establish notoriety, but one would think that plus a the sort of controversy related to the fork and the implications for other open source projects would suggest a certain noteworthiness. But I am not an editor 128.101.102.64 (talk) 16:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC) Drew Stevenson — 128.101.102.64 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep I'll also admit that I am biased toward this project, as I have used TWiki/Foswiki for more than a decade. That said, this is not a new project, it is in fact a continuation of TWiki, which is very notable in the history of wiki technology (it predates both Wikipedia and Mediawiki by several years), and was the first true "structured wiki". The codebase is very mature, as are the developer and user communities, and the forking has raised notable interest in the technology media world (see references above). I think it important that an objective entry be maintained to help people understand what the project is, that it is fact not new, etc.. My own interest in the project aside, I have reviewed the guidelines for inclusion, and believe this is a useful and notable topic for an article. Tsnfoo (talk) 17:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC) — Tsnfoo (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
  • Keep A former user of TWiki who also followed the natural progression to Foswiki. But this is seriously even being debated? Come on hyper-editors. Vet the table of wikis as I just have, with topic pages on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software and please post a convincing argument that Foswiki has less notability than any number of the existing entries. This topic is more informational, more fully cited, and arguably more useful to greater numbers of people than others on that list. It's notable to me, an end user of both Wikipedia and Foswiki. It's notable to universities and fortune 500's that use it. OddMuse or IpbWiki are more notable? More informational and useful to readers than this page?

Craigwbowers (talk) 19:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC) — Craigwbowers (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

  • 'Keep The history makes it notable. COI? There could be in both supporters and deleters. Me? I'm strictly neutral in terms of working on it or using it - or being part of the other side. (I don't and ain't respectively.) No-one's convinced me yet that it's not notable. Peridon (talk) 20:00, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I'm not a developer, only a user, but I rely on the TWiki/Foswiki codebase to organize collaborative information for a NASA spacecraft mission. We operate seven installs in all coordinating dozens of astronomers and physicists across a dozen universities. Make no mistake, Foswiki *is* TWiki -- it's the same code, the same developers. The only thing that has changed is the name, forced by legal saber rattling, ownership of the domain, and of the trademark by only one member of the community -- one whose code contributions the last few years had become minimal. The codebase is notable by any reasonable standard: Gartner's magic quadrant for team collaboration and social software in 2007 puts the codebase at the top of both "completeness of vision" and "ability to execute" among free software Wikis, though of course under the name that the developers and codebase used at that time, namely TWiki. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6777 If you look at commit traffic, for TWiki: http://www.ohloh.net/p/twiki/contributors activity has been dying for a while, with a slight rekindling this year after the community formed a governance organization. When that was locked out of use of the name, activity practically ceased, and *all* the primary recent contributors went to Foswiki: http://www.ohloh.net/p/Foswiki/contributors. Activity continues on TWiki by two people, the trademark holder, and a paid employee. Activity level at the continuing community site on the codebase is an order of magnitude higher. Foswiki 1.0 is really TWiki 4.3, an evolutionary upgrade which significant deployments are tracking for upgrade, for instance Motorola, which uses this wiki codebase extensively in house, and the University of Michigan, which manages over a thousand wiki webs with this codebase for student/departmental/organizational use. COI disclaimer: I am not a developer of this software, though I rely on it extensively. I am leaving this comment under my IP, because most of my edits on Wikipedia are tagged just by my desktop IP. I am also the initial creator of the Foswiki page, and registered a name with Wikipedia to accomplish this because it was the first page which I have created from scratch, and thus required me to actually have an account. Don Barry, Ph.D., Spitzer Space Telescope Science Team, Cornell Astronomy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.236.6.98 (talk) 20:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - per nom. Dayewalker (talk) 21:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment In further support of my Keep vote above, I draw attention to the famous case of the Esso trademark battle in the 70s. In the end, the Esso corporation was forced to change names to Exxon in the United States (it remains Esso elsewhere). Obviously "notability" was unchanged in this branding effort. But when the name of software written by people is involved, it seems among some here that the presumption that the new name is not notable until some time has passed, even if the codebase and community is essentially unchanged (particularly when the renaming is not by choice). That would appear to me as a very unfortunate pro-corporate bias, especially in light of the stated Wikipedia culture which is supposed to avoid links to web pages which primarily exist to sell products and services, e.g. the TWiki.net external link on the TWiki page, or the subordination of the twiki.org page to advertising for TWiki.net after the community was locked out. My contributions to Wikipedia have been primarily casual ones, however, and I do not presume to understand the complexities of the culture which has evolved -- I'm merely stating my perspective. (Don Barry) 132.236.6.98 (talk) 20:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:59, 7 February 2009 (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.
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