Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Panorama Software

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. A fairly confusing situation here. Discussion as to whether this article should be about the business or a redirect to the category seems to be what's happened here and less on the merits of the company. I will take no action except to close this discussion, and further talk regarding where to put what can continue on talk pages. Arkyan • ^(talk) 20:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Panorama Software

Panorama Software (BI) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

This business listing page conflicts with the Panorama Software category and should be deleted John Spikowski 03:09, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

• Previous Removal History
• Keep This doesn't appear to be a criterion for deletion, a disambiguation note on the top of the article may be needed, or at most a new, clearer title such as Panorama Software (Company) CitiCat 03:24, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but article should be properly sourced. Panorama has a presence as a global business software vendor/consultant and developed a key Microsoft component. The article should be named Panorama Software as there is no other "Panorama Software" company on Wikipedia. The category should be titled Panorama software per category naming conventions and any confusion can be handled with a hatnote. Don't disambiguate where unnecessary. --Dhartung | Talk 07:58, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Confused. Well, more so than usual.

  The page being nominated for deletion is a blank page that used to be a redirect. Whatever happens to it is fine with me.

  Panorama Software (BI), by contrast, is a page that should be deleted unless thoroughly rewritten, on account of its promotional tone, excessive vagueness, and general unintelligibility: Panorama Software is a software company specializing in MDX based Business Intelligence solutions. . . Panorama's NovaView product suite includes Analytics, reporting, scorecarding, dashboarding, visualization and modeling applications. No opinion as to whether this business meets WP:CORP, but even if it does, the style of this article is quite inappropriate. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

  • It's blank because John Spikowski (talk · contribs) does not understand the difference between a category and an article, from what I can see. --Dhartung | Talk 08:43, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The goal for the "Panorama Software" page was to move the software company with the same name to a business listing page.(Done) and delete the page. (TODO) When someone enters "panorama software" in the search box, the category "Panorama software" page would show. I'm not an administrator/sysop so someone else with these powers will have to remove the page. I'm not up to speed on all the procedures yet but I'm learning from the seasoned editors I run into on the pages I'm involved with. John Spikowski 05:39, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment The AFD notice has been removed from Panorama Software (BI) by Wikiolap (talk · contribs), apparently because the intent was actually to delete Panorama Software but not the content of the article on the company. I have asked at Talk:Panorama Software (BI) for people to explain exactly what they are trying to do, so that we can help them. At this point, the AFD is in an invalid state, with no notice on any article. --Dhartung | Talk 06:15, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment the situation at the current moment is utterly bizarre and only serves to make navigation far more difficult than it needs to be. It does not matter if a category and an article have the same name.

1. Panorama Software should be an article about the company of that name.
2. Since a user may be looking for information about software for creating photographic panoramas, Panorama Software should have have a hatnote that there is a also a category with that name. This solution allows for easy navigation to relevant information.
3. The only potential problem occurs if we are concerned that a user looking for generic panorama software would encounter as his/her first point of navigation the proprietary Panorama Software. That would be a concern if we were a business directory wanting to give exactly equal exposure but, happily, we're an encyclopedia and so we do not care. CIreland 06:59, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks, CIreland. I'll elaborate on a comment on my Talk page. First, let me address the search issue. The reason that the category doesn't come up first is that categories are checked off by default on the Wikipedia search page. This may not be ideal but it's the way it is -- the feature is there to direct people to articles. As such "Search" or "Go" (go to the first result) will bring up the article Panorama Software first. It will not bring up the category at all unless the box is checked and the user searches again. This appears to be the original source of contention, as there are editors working on articles in Category:Panorama software. This is why it isn't showing up in searches.

Second, there is a manual of style preference for generic article or category names to avoid using proper nouns. Thus, the generic category should be named Panorama software, not Panorama Software. The proper noun should be used for something with that name. If there is to be an article on software for making panoramas, it should also be named Panorama software, uncapitalized. (The first letter may be capitalized or not; it's the same article. This is the way MediaWiki works.)

Third, this seems like it was never intended as a deletion proposal. It seems like the editors of the category wanted to move the business out of the way of their (miscapitalized) category. As they are not in the same namespace there was no actual collision even if they were capitalized the same way. There could be confusion. Confusion is what hatnotes are designed for.

Fourth, the editors may have intended to re-use Panorama Software as the head article for the category. Again, the capitalization is incorrect per naming conventions. My second question is why image stitching is insufficient to cover this topic; panorama "software" is just a special type of image stitching, and not remarkably or technically different. This is a problem outside the scope of this AFD, though. The category Category:Panorama software ends up almost identical to its parent Category:Photo stitching software, which makes the need for a separate category very questionable. I suspect that if it were brought up at categories for deletion, the result would be skeptical. Sometimes a little fine-combed differentiation is simply too much to be really useful.

Finally, I wonder why this was approached the way it was. Somebody should have asked some questions before doing the moves and naming the categories, to begin with. --Dhartung | Talk 08:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Stitching assumes creating a panorama. (merging two or more images) Folks looking for panorama solutions will more then likely type in "panorama software" (looking for Panorama Stitchers, Viewers and Utilities software) and "panorama hardware" looking for panoramic tripod heads, wide angle lenses and other assessories. I think Category:Photo stitching software limits topic scope. You need to provide a panorama viewer to display the special projection the sitiching software creates. John Spikowski 08:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Sorry if I bore those who are more interested in that company but John Spikowski tends to spread wrong information about a subject he doesn't understand well enough. Several images from a camera rotated around a special point of the lens can be stitched to get a panorama. That is only one panorama technique, though a popular one. Other cameras directly output a panoramic strip that doesn't have to be stitched at all but can be corrected (e.g. wavy image due to a badly levelled camera) with the same type of software. Also mosaics can be stitched with panoramic software (think of several overlapping microscopic images from a big object that couldn't be recorded in one go. Stitching those images of a sample would hardly result in a panorama. IMHO the Category:Photo stitching software and an article about image stitching is enough, such a more general naming is to be preferred. Other panorama related software (viewers, conversion and optimization tools, basic technology like QTVR,...) can be easily mentioned and linked from articles like Panoramic photography. Those articles that John Spikowski didn't manage to delete yet (and he is very busy with reorganising the wikipedia) can also link to one another. So my suggestion would be to let go of that Category:Panorama software and the article Panorama Software can live on. Yes, I'm biased, therefore I don't "vote" here. I just wanted to answer some disinformation with facts. --Einemnet 20:02, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Close as there is no criteria given for any deletion. Nuttah68 16:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

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.