Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/NEC APC character set

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. Anarchyte (work | talk) 10:07, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

NEC APC character set[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This article should be deleted as it is a non-notable character set. It was prodded for this reason but was contested.The subject of the article is not notable as there is not significant coverage in reliable sources and therefore should be deleted. -KAP03(^{Talk • Contributions • Email}) 17:20, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:22, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to NEC APC. This is worth keeping, as an indication of one of the differences between the NEC-APC and the IBM-PC (both contemporary MS-DOS boxen), but I can't easily justify a separate article for it. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:42, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andy Dingley: The one thing is that these character set articles have quite a few useless links (links such as ⊕) which would decrease the quality of NEC APC if merged. -KAP03(^{Talk • Contributions • Email}) 22:17, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This argument is void. First of all, these links are fine, but even if they were not, it wouldn't matter a bit in regard to the relevance of the information. Also, if there are issues, they can be worked on over time - this is what we are doing all the time. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it would not add much to the merged article (it is just a table of characters). -KAP03(^{Talk • Contributions • Email}) 22:18, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It may be "just" a table of characters to you, who is obviously not interested in this information. However, exactly this table of characters is of major interest to people carrying out data/program conversions, doing computer forensics, or dealing with internationalization issues. They are also interesting for computer historians. This is exactly the information such people expect from an electronic encyclopedia. Character sets are part of the legacy or "essence" of what's left today of platforms like NEC's APC family, and it is important to preserve it for generations to come. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:14, 4 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:16, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. While long abandoned the NEC APC series of computers once was an important mass-produced alternative personal computer platform competing with the IBM PC architecture. In many ways it was way ahead of IBM's PCs, so it is historically interesting to see and learn what the differences where, why they were developed the way they were, and how and why one platform won over the other. The APC series is of encyclopedic relevance and is notable beyond any doubt. Its character set is only one aspect, but from our perspective today, character sets are part of the "interface" needed to know to access and interpret old data and programs. This is important not only for historical research, but also for computer forensics and for implementors dealing with system or database development or internationalization issues. Therefore, character sets of mass-produced computers and devices as well as those of significant solitaire machines (like those of the main-frame era) are in general important encyclopedic information that needs to be preserved and that people are expecting to find in Wikipedia. The fact that this is also a character set supported by MS-DOS (although a rather esotheric adaption of it) makes it notable as well.

As it was pointed out before, it would be possible to merge this info into the main NEC APC article, but I would prefer it to be kept in a stand-alone article because we have a long-time project running trying to collect and preserve character set information in Wikipedia and this is the standard format we have chosen for articles about character sets. Keeping the character sets separate from the main articles about their platform helps not to clutter those main articles with huge tables (and to distract from character set issues for those interested in character sets), it also allows easier cross-linking between related character sets, and gives more room for future expansion, f.e. adding conversion lists to Unicode (where possible), an often sought after info today. In some cases character sets also have histories and uses beyond those related to their main platform. This can be described in a dedicated article about a character set, but might be off-topic in a generic platform article. So, in order to try and keep a similar format for all character set articles it is desireable to keep the NEC APC character set article as a separate article as well.

In general, we can be thankful that someone finally spent the time to create this article, as it was one of the former red links in the list of character sets still to be added (it was on my long-term "to-do" list as well). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Winged Blades^Godric 03:09, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as this is a valuable article. Character sets are like historical artefacts and Wikipedia should try to preserve these. For example, we have List of Unicode characters. This particular set is from the 1980s, during the initial days of computing. There may be sources to pass WP:GNG which I am unable to access. Looking at the historical significance, I would suggest to keep it. I don't think merging is a good idea because there a lot of information here and the table could use a separate article.--DreamLinker (talk) 20:45, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Arguments put forth by KAP03 are unconvincing. Online sources are scarce so we need to err towards keep on technical topics which predated the internet. ~Kvng (talk) 19:51, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep History lesson by Matthias very convincing. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 16:18, 22 July 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.