Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Polyworld

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-administrator closure.) Northamerica1000^(talk) 02:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Polyworld[edit]

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

Non-notable software. damiens.rf 14:21, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 21:55, 19 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

~~Redirect~~ Merge - to polyworld's programmer, Larry Yaeger. Software article of unclear notability, lacking independent RS coverage, and a search did not reveal additional RS coverage. Software is not independently notable, but the programmer appears to be.Dialectric (talk) 14:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep. I found widespread coverage in probably hundreds of independent academic reliable sources, in English and many other languages. They include peer-reviewed journals, proceedings of papers presented at conferences, graduate theses, etc. I'd suggest following the search steps in WP:BEFORE part D before nominating articles, noting that it says the current poor state of an article is improper grounds for a deletion nomination. A few of the several books that discuss Polyworld:

Chris Impey (2 June 2011). The Living Cosmos: Our Search for Life in the Universe. Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-139-49981-1.
György Kampis; István Karsai; Eörs Szathmáry (28 February 2014). Advances in Artificial Life: 10th European Conference, ECAL 2009, Budapest, Hungary, September 13-16, 2009, Revised Selected Papers. Springer. p. 141. ISBN 978-3-642-21282-6.
John Johnston (2008). The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI. MIT Press. p. 266. ISBN 978-0-262-10126-4.
Christopher G. Langton; Katsunori Shimohara (1997). Artificial Life V: Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. MIT Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-262-62111-3.
Juan J. Romero; Penousal Machado (13 November 2007). The Art of Artificial Evolution: A Handbook on Evolutionary Art and Music. Springer. p. 301. ISBN 978-3-540-72877-1.
Rolf Pfeifer (1998). From Animals to Animats 5: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior. MIT Press. p. 536. ISBN 978-0-262-66144-7.
Luis Mateus Rocha (1 August 2006). Artificial life X: proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems. MIT Press. p. 331. ISBN 978-0-262-68162-9.
Olaf Sporns. Networks of the Brain. MIT Press. p. 303. ISBN 978-0-262-28892-7.
James D. Westervelt (1 January 2001). Simulation Modeling for Watershed Management. Springer. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-387-98893-1.
Sarah Kember (15 April 2013). Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life. Routledge. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-134-55191-0.
Jean-Arcady Meyer; H. L. Roitblat; Stewart W. Wilson (1993). From Animals to Animats 2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior. MIT Press. p. 385. ISBN 978-0-262-63149-5.
Russell K. Standish; Mark A. Bedau; Hussein A. Abbass (2003). Artificial Life 8. MIT Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-262-69281-6.
Pattie Maes (1996). From Animals to Animats 4: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior. MIT Press. p. 485. ISBN 978-0-262-63178-5.
Mathieu Capcarrere (29 August 2005). Advances in Artificial Life: 8th European Conference, ECAL 2005, Canterbury, UK, September 5-9, 2005, Proceedings. Springer. p. 775. ISBN 978-3-540-28848-0.
Jordan Pollack (January 2004). Artificial Life IX: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Artificial Life. MIT Press. p. 268. ISBN 978-0-262-66183-6.
Max A. Bramer; Vladan Devedzic (2004). Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations: IFIP 18th World Computer Congress : TC12 First International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations (AIAI-2004), 22-27 August 2004, Toulouse, France. Springer. p. 56. ISBN 978-1-4020-8150-7.
Christoph Adami (1998). Artificial Life VI: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Life. MIT Press. p. 384. ISBN 978-0-262-51099-8.
Sabine Heller (October 2009). Artificial Life - What Is Artificial Life?. GRIN Verlag. p. 2. ISBN 978-3-640-43506-7.
Stefan Helmreich (2000). Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20800-1.
Kevin R. Grazier (21 August 2013). The Science of Michael Crichton: An Unauthorized Exploration into the Real Science Behind the Fictional Worlds of Michael Crichton. BenBella Books, Inc. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-935251-41-5.

Just search for polyworld on scholar.google.com and books.google.com for more references. ––Agyle (talk) 20:12, 23 January 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^(talk) 21:39, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Larry Yaeger. Dozens of trivial mentions don't add up to significant coverage. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 09:34, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I should have been more selective in my examples; I was responding to Dialectric being unable to find a single independent RS reference to Polyworld, and included only book citations for ease of citing. By trivial, I assume you mean one-line descriptions, or mentions like "We decided to use Polyworld." There are many RS references with multiparagraph discussions of Polyworld. Also WP:SIGCOV pertains to general notability, while this more appropriately falls under WP:NSOFT. “Software is notable if it meets any one of these criteria: The software is discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field. References that cite trivia do not fulfill this requirement.” The software was foundational within the field of Artificial Life, and is still relevant twenty years later; Google Scholar shows 195 articles/books/papers that cite Yaeger's original 1994 PolyWorld: Life in a new context.

Mathieu Capcarrere (29 August 2005). Advances in Artificial Life: 8th European Conference, ECAL 2005, Canterbury, UK, September 5-9, 2005, Proceedings. Springer. p. 775. ISBN 978-3-540-28848-0.

Only a single reference, but a significant one, in introducing the topic of Artificial Life programs: “Yaeger's Polyworld is a seminal example in which agents interact utilizing coulour vision.” Consider the term "seminal example" when evaluating it against the WP:NSOFT's inclusion of any software “discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field.”

McCormack, Jon; Dorin, Alan (2002). "Ways of Seeing: Visualization of Artificial Life Environments" (PDF). Preprint for Beyond Fitness: Visualizing Evolution, Alife 8, Smith, Bird, Bullock (eds), MIT Press 2002.

Page-and-a-half discussion, with screenshot, discussing Polyworld in the context of ALife software. Includes “Polyworld is an important and significant contribution to the field of Artificial Life. It, and simulations like it, help to confirm that many of Alife's basic tenets and goals are valid – that it may be possible to broaden our definition of life and our knowledge of living systems via simulation.”

John Johnston (2008). The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI. MIT Press. p. 265–267. ISBN 978-0-262-10126-4.

Page and half or so contrasting Polyworld and Tierra. "On these grounds alone, Polyworld clearly qualifies as one of the most complex of ALife worlds." (This was written 14 years after Polyworld's introduction).

Dam, A. C. (2005). "The Biological Validity of Evolving Artificial Life" (PDF). 3th Twente Student Conference on IT. University of Twente.

Includes 2 paragraph intro, then a one page detailed description, then analysis/comparison to other ALife software.

Christopher G. Langton; Katsunori Shimohara (1997). Artificial Life V: Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. MIT Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-262-62111-3.

Describes Polyworld as the inspiration for a new ALife program Gaia; single paragraph summary of Polyworld, followed by several comparisons over ensuing pages with specific features or behaviors of Polyworld.

Bornhofen, Stefan; Lattaud, Claude (2006). "Outlines of Artificial Life: A Brief History of Evolutionary Individual Based Models". 3871: 226–237. doi:10.1007/11740698_20. ISSN 0302-9743. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Half page description of Polyworld, then discussed in comparison to two similar-class EIBMs; it was chosen for an 11 page "brief history" of these types of programs, which the author describes as a "non-exhaustive survey of the constitutive work of the last twenty years".

Chris Impey (2 June 2011). The Living Cosmos: Our Search for Life in the Universe. Cambridge University Press. pp. 130–133. ISBN 978-1-139-49981-1.

Two paragraph description to open a short section on ALife, with a couple mentions going back to Polyworld in following pages.

Stefan Helmreich (2000). Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20800-1.

Here's a case where I think a dozen trivial references do establish something; Polyworld is mentioned twelve different times in this book (not counting in citations), sometimes just for one-sentence example, but the frequent, common references like that are illustrative of its being an well known, important work in its field.

Also consider Yaeger's dozen or more papers on Polyworld, by himself and with collaborators, spanning two decades. While non-academic software authors writing about their own work would be considered primary sources, remember that Yaeger is being published in peer-reviewed journals, or having papers accepted at significant academic conferences, so they are themselves reliable sources. A reason you don't have lots of redundent in-depth reviews of PolyWorld is that they aren't needed within academia the way they are with commercial software, as "(Yaeger 1994)" pretty well covers the topic, and virtually anyone in the field of Artificial Life would be familiar with the software and its fundamental concepts. I'll list just four of Yaeger's papers here:

Yaeger, Larry. "PolyWorld: Life in a new context". Proc. Artificial Life 3:year=1994.

His original conference paper, references Polyworld throughout.

Yaeger, Larry S. (2009). "How evolution guides complexity". HFSP Journal. 3 (5): 328–339. doi:10.2976/1.3233712. ISSN 1955-2068.

A Yaeger journal article that references Polyworld throughout.

Yaeger, Larry S.; Sporns, Olaf (2006). "Evolution of neural structure and complexity in a computational ecology" (PDF). Artificial Life X: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems.

Another Yaeger conference paper that references Polyworld throughout.

Lizier, Joseph T.; Piraveenan, Mahendra; Pradhana, Dany; Prokopenko, Mikhail; Yaeger, Larry S. (2011). "Functional and Structural Topologies in Evolved Neural Networks". 5777: 140–147. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-21283-3_18. ISSN 0302-9743. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Another Yaeger journal article that references Polyworld throughout.

I could cite a lot more, but if you're still not convinced, I assume more of the same won't sway you.

––Agyle (talk) 13:27, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Agyle, you've done a lot of work finding solid sources, and if you're planning on adding some of this content to the article, I'll change my vote to keep. As it is, the article is so thin that a redirect or merge still makes more sense to me.Dialectric (talk) 13:39, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - The academic coverage by Argyle (good job!) establishes notability for this software. -- Whpq (talk) 17:20, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
~~Merge & redirect~~ to Larry Yaeger. Independent coverage is barely a sentence or two. He may have published a lot about this, but the publications aren't highly cited in Google Scholar (~300 citations combining all papers is too low for Wikipedia article). I don't see why a separate page is justified when his bio is barely a stub itself. This is basically the main thing he is known for [1]. His h-index is only 15, which itself is problematic for an WP:ACADEMIC in this field, but that's for another discussion. Someone not using his real name (talk) 08:42, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Someone not using his real name (talk) 08:49, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Someone not using his real name, you can only find two independent sentences on the topic the entire internet??!? Are you KIDDING me?? I posted an anotated list of references from six other authors ranging from two paragraphs to two pages each, just one post above yours. Sorry but this is just ridiculous, people doing these reviews are incapable of using google, oblivious to Wikipedia's academic notability guidelines, and can't even read a spoon-fed synopsis of information. Please do Wikipedia a favor and don't visit AfD discussions. You're doing a disservice to the world. ––Agyle (talk) 01:23, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry about that. You are right, I should have read your 2nd list more carefully: McCormack & Dorin (2002) and to a lesser extent Johnston (2008) and Bornhofen & Lattaud (2006) work toward satisfying WP:GNG. Combined with the moderate citation count, this a weak keep from me. It doesn't make a huge difference on which page this info is hosted though—Google finds section names just as well (and Wikipedia's own search follows/finds redirects.) Someone not using his real name (talk) 17:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I can't really bring myself to feel very strongly either way about this, so I've struck my vote. I will say that Agyle does make compelling arguments, but he probably needs to switch to decaff. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:44, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep In a few months if little has been done I'll consider taking this to AfD again as there appears to be WP:SIGCOV but I'm having an extremely difficult time piecing together whether all the coverage actually makes this a notable piece of software or rather a lengthy mention in another article. Mkdw ^talk 04:50, 1 February 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.