User:Flyguy649/Dwm

Reasons for my No consensus closure of Articles for deletion/Dwm (2nd nomination)

If you want to make any comments or ask questions about this closure, please use User talk:Flyguy649/Dwm rather than my talk page. I hope the community can live with my decision; if not, there is deletion review.

Guidelines and policies considered
Not all of these are mentioned in my arguments below.
 * Five pillars – the fundamental principles by which Wikipedia operates
 * What Wikipedia is not (policy)
 * Ignore all rules (policy)
 * Verifiability (policy)
 * Identifying reliable sources (guideline)
 * Notability (guideline)

Delete
Editors recommending deletion used one or more of the following:
 * 1) Fails to establish notability (WP:N)
 * 2) Lack of reliable sources (WP:RS)
 * 3) Canvassing/meatpuppetry is a sure sign the article is not-notable

Keep
Editors recommending that the article not be deleted used one or more of the following:
 * 1) Existing references are WP:RS
 * 2) The article is at least minimally notable
 * 3) Possible WP:RS listed in last AfD
 * 4) This is the 2nd AfD in a week, let it be!
 * 5) Dwm is important/influential in the history of tiling window managers
 * 6) Per Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Notability of free open source software
 * 7) Other articles exisit (i.e. WP:OTHERCRAP)
 * 8) Per Debian statistics
 * 9) other (e.g. "Typical Wikipedia Faggotry")

My responses
I considered points 1 and 2 in the "delete" group to be strong arguements and gave relatively less weight to point 3. In the "keep" group, I considered points 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 worthy of further investigation. Re point 4: Although this is technically a 2nd AfD, the closing admin felt that re-running the AfD was the only way to try to get around the canvassing/meatpuppetry of the last AfD. Thus, I didn't find point 4 to be valid. Points 7 and 9 are invalid for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Editors

 * 58 editors !voted in the Afd:
 * 41 recommended keep
 * 13 recommended delete (including delete/merge)
 * 4 recommended something else (general comments without !votes and 1 abstention by a user whose contributions are all questionable)

There were several comments in the AfD noting off-Wikipedia canvassing for keeps comments. I looked at the edits of all the users prior to their !vote in the AfD. Basically I looked for !votes after a long period of inactivity, !votes by new accounts, and !votes by relatively new accounts.

Few edits (<30)
All recommended keep except :
 * -- pointless abstention
 * -- pointless abstention
 * -- pointless abstention
 * -- pointless abstention

Edit after long inactivity
A number of editors commented on the AfD after no activity for some time.

What I did
I looked at the arguments of editors in both the above categories and ignored any that were not policy/guideline-based.

Analysis
Delete – Points 1 & 2 above are policy or guideline-based and thus carried a lot of weight. I decided that evidence of off-site canvassing is not of itself a valid reason for deleting an article, merely a cue to look at the contributions of editors with few edits or edits after long periods of inactivity.

Keep – This is where the whole AfD turns. Are the arguments here strong enough to either generate no-consensus or to create a consensus of "Keep"? I'll look at the above arguments point by point:


 * 1) The sources used in the article are not WP:RS as commonly accepted by the Wikipedia community. But see my arguments below.
 * 2) The subject seems notable, and I'd argue that together with point 8 (Debian stats) there is minimal notability established. (It would be extremely helpful if the community could decide to better notability/reliable source guidelines for free/open-source software. User:Maxcantor has an elegant argument here.) However by point 1 above, this isn't sufficient to demonstrate that the article should be kept.
 * 3) See point 1
 * 4) Invalid argument
 * 5) Dwm seems to be important, but without WP:RS it is not possible to determine this
 * 6) Unfortunately, this is a failed attempt at gaining a community-acceptable standard for FOSS, so this argument is not very persuasive
 * 7) Invalid argument
 * 8) An interesting, atypical source for the notability of Dwm. Debian stats are suggestive of the fact that people seek out the software, and I am willing to accept that this demonstrates notability, at least minimally.
 * 9) Invalid argument; ignored

So we're left with an article about a subject that appears at least minimally notable, but no method in which to use a community-acceptable WP:RS to verify it. What else can guide us? Wikipedia's principals (aka the five pillars) reminds us that we're here to build an encyclopedia. The oft quoted fifth pillar, WP:IAR, reminds us that, “If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.” I don't like invoking WP:IAR and I won't here. Continuing with WP:5P, the first pillar says, “...we must strive for verifiable accuracy...” (my emphasis; this wording has been there for years, e.g. ). But the admonishment that we should “strive” for verifiability suggests that there are times where we should be flexible in how we verify something. I don't advocate invoking this frequently, but in this case, for this particular bit of FOSS, I have decided that we should.

Thus, while the sources present in Dwm do not satisfy WP:RS, they do allow us to strive for verifiability. Based on this, and the Debian downloads suggesting notability, the arguments in favour of keeping and deleting the article are in sufficient balance that it isn't possible to determine a single consensus.

Why this took so long
Just a quick note on this. It wasn't my intention that this take 5 days to look into and write up. This is a complex AfD and I wanted to give due consideration to all arguments. Also, much as I love spending time on Wikipedia, I have other things to do and I had more of those things than expected this week; real life.

Other comments
I note that several users made comments about the AfD on my talk page while waiting for me to determine consensus. Some of these were obvious attempts to influence my decision. While I admire the passion that this AfD stirs, I would encourage people not to make such comments about pending closures in the future.