Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hardware restriction

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. Randykitty (talk) 13:32, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hardware restriction[edit]

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This article seems like a bad mishmash. It's effectively a list, yet I see no evidence that this topic has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources (WP:NLIST). I don't see how multiple reliable secondary sources would discuss secure boot, TiVoization, Intel paywalling extra threads on their chips, verified boot, and hardware digital copy protection (DRM) as a single coherent topic. The article's unclear scope means that it's essentially WP:OR and a coatrack. Might be better discussed at Secure boot, Digital rights management, Android bootloader restrictions, or wherever. But regardless of notability, I think WP:TNT is warranted given the state of the article. DFlhb (talk) 22:06, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Piracy, Computing, and Software. DFlhb (talk) 22:06, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: hardware restrictions are referred to at length within the article's sources. Additionally, (and separately from the linked sources) books have been written about this topic. GNG and SIGCOV has been met; notable Jack4576 (talk) 14:00, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: valid WP:OR concerns as no sources discussing the subject overall are used to determine scope. Current scope also violates WP:LISTCRITERIA as "hardware restriction scheme may protect against physical or malware attacks" spans an endless list of unrelated topics, starting from Harvard architecture. No objection to a WP:TNT or a redirect as an alternative. PaulT2022 (talk) 16:51, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep: this topic needs an article (or it needs to be spun off to multiple new or existing articles0. It's worth noting that hardware restrictions were a much bigger deal 2-4 decades ago. You could write a small, reliably sourced article about IBM's famous "Golden Screwdriver" that made it hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrade profits - and that's just one scheme. The problem: who's going to do what it takes to get a coherent article out of what we have now? On the article talk page, DFlhb put some effort into figuring this out without much headway. The only reason I'm writing "keep" is that it'll be a source of information to build on (or cannibalize for another article) in the indefinite future. Unlike a BLP, it's not a liability just sitting there. But, my keep is "weak" and I can see others' reasons for deleting. Again, thanks to DFlhb for your work on this. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:24, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Jack4576. Note that some sources use different phrases such as "Hardware limitations" (maybe some synonyms should get added to the lead or the article be moved).

Maybe it would be useful to structure the article based on purposes of restrictions such as DRM (remove "hardware DRM" from the lead and add it in bold to the new subsection), security (one source describes one example – "attestation contract"s for "proving the [user's] integrity of their machine"), emergency shutdown, and so on. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:56, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with "per Jack" is that none of the article's sources use the term "hardware restriction", nor discuss the general topic, so not only is almost everything WP:SYNTH, these sources also couldn't sustain a proper article structure organized around types of restrictions rather than instances. Almost the entirety of the article is about software restrictions: (Intel CPU "pay-to-unlock", verified/trusted/secure boot, Apple SHSH blobs, Android bootloader lock unless we're talking specifically about the RPMB fuse, OLPC). That leaves Intel Insider and TEE as hardware-based, but TEE isn't a restriction and instead belongs in Hardware security. Hence the need for WP:TNT, which we can delay if people want to merge bits and pieces to other articles. If we stubify, we end up with a mere unsourced definition: REF1 is a primary source that just verifies the term, REF2 is about software not hardware, and REF3 is in-scope but doesn't use, or define, the term hardware restriction.

Side note: I'm not sure what you mean by emergency shutdown; the thesis paper you link is great, but hardware restriction wouldn't be the right term for attestation, TPMs, x86 late launch, etc. TPMs would squarely fall in the scope of Hardware security too. DFlhb (talk) 01:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: article is WP:OR essay, this list could be endless because of the vague critera, and most of the information is already covered elsewhere, Hardware security, Harvard architecture. // Timothy :: talk 07:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:04, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Article has WP:OR issues, is a list with vague criteria, and is just a mish-mash of different things that makes an incoherent article that is already well-covered elsewhere. JML1148 (talk | contribs) 01:57, 27 May 2023 (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.