Talk:Impulse Tracker

Popularity
Why the hell is ModLand not a "reliable" source when it comes to the number of IT files that exist in this world? Of course you can't read that "there are more than 20.000 files in IT format" in your newspaper. ModLand, ModArchive etc. are very reliable sites when it comes to Module music.


 * I'll try to explain. Firstly, the source cited is "ExoticA", an open wiki with no professional editorial oversight (see WP:Reliable sources). Secondly, the source is pure data which requires original research to interpret into the claim being made. You'll need a source that explicitly states the popularity of the software. We're not asking for a newspaper. For example, there are half-a-dozen or so magazines on audio and music production, from reputable publishers (in addition to who knows how many magazines on software in general). Marasmusine (talk) 18:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, the content on ExoticA is not editable since the data is directly pulled from the ModLand database. I chose this link because it's a bit more easier than counting files on a FTP server. Also, why do you keep deleting the "poplarity" section instead of putting [citation needed] to the questionable phrases? That would help others improving the article as well. If you were consistent, you would have to delete the fact that Infected Mushroom used Impulse Tracker on their own wiki page as well, as that one doesn't even link to the interview which mentions this. 93.195.53.17 (talk) 15:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * 1)Anywhichway, file counting is original research. 2)"The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material". So, as a counter-example: I add the statement "Impulse Tracker is the least popular tracker." and ask that the "citation needed" template be added instead of the statement being removed. 3)To be perfectly consistant, I would have to have omnipresent access to every wikipedia article. No, I haven't fully examined the Mushroom article yet although I have already removed one unacceptable source. Marasmusine (talk) 11:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

- Hoo boy, this is one long-ass reply, but hear me out please. (and apologies for breaking the indentation rules here, too)

First, I'm sorry, but If you really think IT somehow is or ever was the "least popular" tracker in any measurable means, you are *seriously* out of your area of expertise here, and if you really think an interview with a well-known band is "unacceptable", and are finding it necessary to delete content on that basis, there really is no hope here and you might as well start deleting all of these demoscene articles right now and put blocks on people who try to recreate them, because that's every bit as asinine.

I have been idly watching this article for quite some time, and the actions of *certain people* just astounds me. Please don't take this too personally, but it is pretty ridiculous the levels that some people will go to in order to see that some random page gets deleted because their knickers are in a knot about some violation or another of whatever wikipedia policies. I imagine you devoted copious amounts of time to reading through those policies -- because you're passionate about what you do, and there is really nothing wrong with that; I'm also very passionate about both my work and personal interests. But sometimes, passion can cloud one's judgment and blur the line between the proper and nonsensical; and continually challenging this article, one for a piece of software so critically important to the development of the demoscene as a whole, squarely falls into the category of patent nonsense.

Really. People have linked all sorts of different web pages as sources, but they're almost inevitably taken down with claims of varying degrees of irrationality on how such-and-such is not reliable (really now, websites of well-known musicians aren't valid or reliable? Much less that salon.com article about the demoscene?), and replaced with complaint banners -- or just outright deleting the article altogether. Yet there are countless thousands of other articles on wikipedia that remain unmolested, because none of the deletionists have gotten to them just yet. Do you just HAVE to see that this one gets deleted for some lunatic reason and god forbid that someone might cite a source that isn't in a professional journal or whatever you think really is valid? What I request is really quite simple; either all the wikipedia moderators should maintain the same standard across the entire site, and go put a big fugly-looking banner on every single article that doesn't have a list of 100 references to technical journals and articles from the NY Times - and good luck doing that - or just leave articles like this one alone, because it is very obviously noteworthy and I don't give a *damn* how many "reliable" sources it has or doesn't; anyone at all with a single shred of knowledge about the demoscene can tell you that yes this is most definitely notable, and to argue that point is completely foolish. It's as much of common knowledge to the demoscene as Beowulf is to an English major.

What is the objection to leaving it alone? This isn't some worthless article about how someone's Uncle Jim can play the kazoo with his butt, it's a fully legitimate piece of software, that's even been used by high-profile game companies to make full soundtracks, and at some point, that statement *was* backed up by a link to one of those companies' websites that showed it. You're not paying some tax based on the number of articles in Wikipedia, are you? (If so, your country has some very weird tax laws.) The information presented in the article is legitimate and verifiable.

Speaking of sourcing, why is "Impulse Tracker was coded in assembly language" marked citation needed, by the way? That's mentioned in the user manual, in plain English. In fact the .wav writer pirating was mentioned in the readme as well, straight from Jeffrey Lim himself and readily available for download. Why do those two sentences specifically need to be cited? And for "compatible software": what's the rationale for that list of random games that use IT files? Who picked those games? I've never heard of either of them. Surely Deus Ex or Unreal Tournament -- commercial titles produced by a well-known game company -- ought to be mentioned there, rather than two random unknown games that just have two or three songs total? If you're going to raise issues with the article, at least pick sensible complaints instead of strange little details of actually verifiable statements, especially ones that *other articles already have in them* (I'm referring here to Infected Mushroom, of course). Oh, and the envelope controls don't use ADSR; I have no idea who wrote that, but they're much more powerful and flexible than that.

I'm truly sorry that this program has not been featured in its own article in a well-respected technical journal or internationally recognizable newspaper, or that no one has yet been able to supply one of the (several!) print magazines it has been referenced and even *distributed* in (and yes, there were magazines that included IT on pack-in disks with some issues, but good luck finding those 10-15 years after the fact) -- but constantly badgering the people who are really trying here in spite of your overly pedantic rule enforcement in order to justify an article for something whose existence alone should be enough to make it justifiable really is not helping.

If you really do want to see this article thrive, as you seem to claim, maybe you could put some of your wikipedia expertise to good use and HELP it, rather than fighting everyone else who tries to contribute content. (Before it even comes up: I feel that I cannot in good faith edit this article myself, and I strongly doubt you are in my position.)

By the way, how about the articles for Scream Tracker? Fast Tracker? Those look to be in about the same shape as this article, so if you're determined enough you can also decide that all the sources for those articles are irrelevant and illegitimate too - I don't see any worthwhile sources there, so obviously those are useless programs that we can pretend don't exist too. And while I'm chopping away at the pillars of the demoscene, you might as well also delete Modplug Tracker and Renoise, because those programs are basically derivatives, and they would never have existed if Impulse Tracker didn't. But I think we can both agree that destructive mass removal of articles is just plain silly.

Burning and salting the land is never a productive way to encourage growth.) — Storlek 05:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I want to avoid an equally long reply, but I'll try to address some of your points in order.


 * I have made no statement about the popularity of this subject.
 * isatrance.com shows no sign of fulfilling our criteria for reliable sources. If the band are well-known, and have something to say about IT, perhaps it'll be in DJ Mag or similar. Your follow-up statement about bulk deletion and blocks is a non sequitor.
 * This is how your second paragraph comes off to me: "I like this subject more than you understand Wikipedia policy: therefore it should be exempt from policy." Also, I don't know if you mean me by "certain people", so I should point out that I haven't yet called for deletion: In fact I've declined a speedy deletion request, and I've also added references. So if you are directing this at me, a lot of your statements are again non sequitors.
 * "Comply with this untenable request, or leave this article in an unsatisfactory state." - No.
 * "Impulse Tracker was coded in assembly language" - this is an objective statement so yes: if this is in the manual you can cite it. I recommend Template:Cite manual.
 * Compatible software - You're quite right, thanks for your pedantry :> . I'll see if the existing text can be verified; do you have citations for the games you mentioned?
 * Ultimately the article is going to have to demonstrate notability beyond "it's popular." - yes, the default for this is showing "significant coverage". But note that not fulfulling the notability guidelines doesn't always mean deletion. Another option is to take the verified material and including it in an article on a broader topic. Natural targets would be Tracker (music software) or Music sequencer. Or some new article that gives an overview on specific tracker software.
 * Yes, the FT2 and ST articles do need attention. ModPlug at least shows that it was covered in Computer Music.
 * No-one has proposed "destructive mass removal of articles".
 * Another point I wanted to clarify was why citing exoticA.org was "original research". There's a logical leap between running the search numbers on one website and making claims of overall popularity. There are other variables: Maybe IT users just prefer to use that website? Is it just the IT file format that's being used more often? (I save in IT format when using ModPlug). This is why a reliable secondary source is required to make that statement no matter how much we feel it to be true.
 * Disclaimer: I grew up on Soundtracker (the Spectrum one, not the unix one) and OctaMED (Amiga). Marasmusine (talk) 08:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I absolutely did not write those words you're putting in quotes. Do not put words in my mouth; I put none in yours. In fact, if you will re-read, you will note that I was very careful not to point at you, because I know you are not the only, and not even the first person to bother this article; you're simply the most persistent. I even said, and if you want a citation it's on this page, "Please don't take this too personally", because it's far from personal; on the other hand if you want it to be personal I can make it so. The non sequiturs (and that's how it's spelled) are clearly intended to reflect the overall ridiculous behavior with which this article has been treated in the past. Sorry to see you missed that, I'll be clearer in the future. If isatrance isn't good, try searching for some excerpt of text from that interview. It was reprinted in tons of other places, one being the Times of India. The other citations you're requesting about games and artists that use the program USED TO BE on this talk page, supplied by some friendly and helpful people, but the article disappeared before anyone edited them in. As far as notability, I'm really not sure what you want. Impulse Tracker is an evolutionary step in trackers and the demoscene much the same way that Homo erectus derived Homo sapiens. If you look around, you can find all sorts of references to that end; even a glance at the feature sets for Impulse Tracker and Renoise shows many similarities, other programs like Modplug pulled a large body of features and built their interface around compatibility with playing Impulse Tracker files *because* it was such an important milestone in tracker design. Giving entire articles to Renoise and MPT while stuffing Impulse Tracker into a box just because you can't find some newspaper articles is crazy. If those are notable, so is this. Both of those programs, as well as countless others, support the file format. It didn't come from nowhere. There's at least four clones of the Impulse Tracker interface with varying intentions, and those programs exist because Impulse Tracker is noteworthy and important enough, and has a large and dedicated enough userbase, to warrant rebuilding it in its entirety when it ceases to be practical to use directly.

No users "use" Modland (which is by the way a separate entity from ExoticA proper) -- its files are pulled from tons of other places. If you had bothered to read the site you would find that (a) it's in fact primarily Amiga based (as you could tell from the Workbench theme, if not from the *very first sentence* on the homepage, and (b) the description on that same homepage of Modland (which is what you're actually talking about here, to be technically accurate) says who put it all together. But if that's not enough, try looking at scenemusic.eu, or modarchive.org, or any of many other archives. (For that matter, isn't "how many google hits" one of wikipedia's policies? If counting files is bad, then google hits are bad too for the same reasons. I think the definition of research has been tremendously warped.) Or how about notability in terms of borrowed features and interface? The Tracker History Graphing Project would help with that: http://helllabs.org/tracker-history/

As for your contribution, specifically the claim that IT is "one of the first tracker programs for the DOS platform": Wherever you pulled that is as far from a "reliable source" as you could get, it's almost surely the last DOS tracker ever. FT2, ST3, Orpheus, Digitrakker, RealTracker, UltraTracker, Liquid Tracker, Farandole, Multitracker, Composer 669, Unis 669, Composer 667, Whacker Tracker, TakeTracker, ModEdit, and KingMod all came well before Impulse Tracker -- that's just off the top of my head, not even getting into all the Adlib trackers, and I'm just getting started. (Noteworthy? Hardly.)

BTW: I wrote more than enough of a rant about this page a couple months back (http://community.livejournal.com/impulse_tracker/3391.html), which I'm a but bummed to see hasn't had much of an effect. I guess the right eyes haven't seen it?

13:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I tried to be objective in my response, but I guess it came off the wrong way. Sorry if I was rude. I'll just try to focus on the specifics.
 * Searching for the isatrance interview on Google or the Times didn't actually return the hits, but I managed to find the links from the old AfD discussion: Times of Indiathescene - so yay, I'll put that citation in. Other useful links were Salon Gamasutraepicgames.com. But, as pointed out in the discussion, these are trivial mentions that don't contribute towards how we define notability.
 * I'll dig out the old talk page and archive it at Talk:Impulse Tracker/archive. I can't see the links for the game verification, but perhaps you were referring to the above. I can also see where 4players.de's reliability was challenged and I conceded; I had forgotten about that.
 * "how many google hits" isn't any kind of policy, and you're right: using that kind of figure is seen as a rather crude argument in discussions on notability, for example. Thanks for explaining the Modland search further, but I stand by my argument. I'll concede that you could make the statement "Modland music collection has 20741 files in the .IT format." if the results can be shown on a non-wiki page (perhaps directly from Modland?). We still need a reliable source to explicitly comment on Impulse Tracker's popularity.
 * Yes, I think you could make an argument for notability from Impulse Tracker being a seminal piece of software. You still need seconday sources from reliable publications to back this claim. I think I've mentioned before that I'm sure that a magazine like Computer Music would have an article on tracker software in one of its back issues. Marasmusine (talk) 18:04, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No harm, I have a very thick shell, I'm sure we both are annoying each other to some extent here, but that's what the internet is great for, eh. :)

re. Modland: there's certainly a way to query the database, namely http://www.exotica.org.uk/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special:Modland&md=for&id=162 - but I don't quite see what your reservation is with the content being on a wiki. More than half the internet runs on either wikis or other CMS systems which work in a remarkably similar manner. If it's against user generated content, consider that everything ever written was "generated" by a "user". If it's reliability of information, as that previous incorrect statement about IT being the first DOS tracker shows, any plain old website can be just as unreliable; you need people who know the subject to help in differentiating fact from junk regardless.

As I said before, I think you might find it difficult to back up articles of this nature with newspaper or magazine clippings, and it's not because it's irrelevant to the world, it's just the nature of the subject. User manuals, source repositories, and forums are probably the best sources of information, and if you're excluding those, passing references might be all you find unless you're very lucky. But, if Salon is going to be considered a valid source, then perhaps this counts too: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul04/articles/pcmusician.htm

There's still all those other references and content that I outlined in that livejournal post.

Maybe a list of "notable Impulse Tracker users" - especially ones that have existing wiki pages - would be nice to add?

(And didn't I say I wasn't going to write any more about this page! Blah. Someone else can pick up from here; but for whoever wants to talk further with me specifically, I'm on irc.) - Storlek 02:32, 17 May 2010 (UTC) [p.s.: how about using Trax Weekly? its content was written by some of the biggest tracker musicians back in the day; that Salon article made a reference to it, and there's full articles in there about Impulse Tracker features, how to use it, stuff written by Jeffrey Lim, etc. Might turn up something by searching through there.]


 * Yes, this is an issue I see time and time again with subjects that have strong community support, but little published material. But reflecting the published material is how Wikipedia is defined. If the sum total of coverage in magazines and books is 4 sentences, then that's roughly what we'll have too. Beyond that - citing personal knowledge or self-published sources - you'd be looking at developing a seperate topic-specific encyclopedia instead. (Is there one specifically for music software?)
 * The Sound on Sound link discusses trackers in general, so it will be a good source for our Tracker article. From your livejournal post, there's also another Salon.com link (which happily explicitly states that IT is "popular"). Pending Trax Weekly, we now have a number of single and half-sentences on IT. Other articles with more coverage than this are deleted regularly on the grounds of WP:N.
 * Now I don't want to see this material deleted, as it is at least verifiable. So what I propose is rewriting List of audio trackers to give a good summary of IT and other software that don't meet the Notability guidelines. This can even be arranged to show the hierarchy, where verifiable. This page would redirect there. I hope you'll think this is a fair compromise: This information is still preserved in the encyclopedia whilst adhering to policy and guidelines. Marasmusine (talk) 11:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * well, in the interest of fairness and well-roundedness, if that's what it'll be, I would be inclined to place all trackers into that article (ST3, FT2, MPT, Renoise, LSDJ/Nanoloop, ...) since I don't think any of them have more than a few paragraphs anyway. That seems a better solution than shoving all of them into bullet-points under Digital audio workstation. Personally I just want to see things handled uniformly :P
 * Aren't both of those Salon links the same page?
 * - Storlek 12:04, 17 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.25.32.178 (talk)

Sound examples
I've seen, with some concern, an uncontrolled "sound examples" section in this article. How are we going to avoid this being a huge long list of links to any IT file anyone fancies adding? I can see some say they were included with Impulsetracker, so if they are some sort of official sample that may be a basis. But most others don't have a clear reason for exclusion, and therefore can only be assumed to be editors' favourites (or possibly even editors' own). A link to an authoritative archive of sample IT files would be far better, or a link to an appropriate DMOZ category. If no control or criteria for inclusion is placed on this section, then it has to be removed, or it will just be a maintenance nightmare and no help to any reader. Halsteadk (talk) 14:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Mentioning Schism Tracker?
I have discovered after a long gap in my tracking life, that a program recreates the full Impulse Tracker tool perfectly. It is called Schism Tracker, and I have found that Wikipedia doesn't have an article on it. It is an open source tool, freely downladable, and provides 99% of all the functionality of Impulse Tracker v2.14! I think this tool should be mentioned on the Impulse Tracker page somehow. Perhaps at the bottom somewhere? Or perhaps it should even have it's own page? I am not familiar enough with Wikiepedia yet to do this myself... Najob (talk) 10:54, 20 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This tracker is mentioned in several printed books. Therefore, I do support including it into the current article. If you decide to create a separate article make sure the references are good enough. Unfortunately it is not always possible to find bulletproof references for this kind of topics. An9elFish  (talk) 20:23, 4 May 2022 (UTC)