Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arabeyes


 * 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   No consensus, leaning towards keep. Stifle (talk) 18:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Arabeyes

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Seemingly stagnant project, no established notability through reliable third-party sources, reads like a vanity article. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:45, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete - This project is dead, it never progressed past 53% completion and the official web site hasn't been updated in over a year. The only source I can find to establish notability is an old news article in the Pakistan Dawn, but that on its own isn't sufficient. The main contributors to the article have traditionally been those with a conflict of interest which makes the article resemble a vanity article. --  At am a chat 23:26, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Neutral - I'm changing my vote for reasons below, I'm still not convinced the article satisfies WP:N but it comes very close. --  At am a chat 18:20, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This AfD nomination was incomplete. It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 14:00, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete - nn project that never produced anything, started by a bunch of people nobody has ever heard of --T-rex 20:03, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep
 * What is the 53% figure and where is it from? Arabeyes harbours many projects in various levels of completeness. Some have been completed and some are still being worked on.
 * The main website seems stagnant because well... we don't do stuff on the main website. Lots of work is instead being done on the wiki, the mailing lists and the subversion repository. The main site also sporadically announces new releases but not all of them.
 * "project that never produced anything": Please don't spread false info out of ignorance. The project led to complete translations of GNOME, Firefox, Pidgin and various open source software. More is being worked on and is in various levels of completion such as KDE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian etc. Through the project many Arabic and RTL related bugs have been fixed, with patches to software such as VIM, Putty and emacs. Most recently more work on translations, fonts, spell checking, technical dictionary etc has been done. That's just off the top of my head.
 * On notability... you don't hear about it because it doesn't target English speakers. Most Arab Linux users have in various forms been in contact with the project. Arabeyes is basically the main site for Arabic GNU/Linux/OSS users - We used to keep press coverage in this page. Although we don't update it any more because the person who used to do that has been inactive. A replacement main website is in development.
 * Essentially, our main problem is the main site, it's an ad-hoc piece of code that we're seeking to replace soon. --Djihed (talk) 14:46, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * On conflict of interest, apart from the oringinal creator who wrote two sentences, and me who deleted a few sentences recently to sanitise the article, could you document who else of that long list of editors has a conflict of interest? --Djihed (talk) 14:59, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - The bottom line is that you have to establish that Arabeyes is notable using the criteria at WP:N. That means significant coverage from reliable sources. --  At am a chat 15:57, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Arabeyes provides the official Arabic translations for OpenOffice.org, Debian, the Mozilla Foundation and many others. If you want to see activity, have a look at the mailing-lists archives or the commit logs for all those projects --Adnene (talk) 13:47, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - I see you are new to Wikipedia, since your account was created today and has only been used to comment on this AfD. Wikipedia requires reliable sources for verification, none of what you have suggested applies. --  At am a chat 15:25, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * So the press page I linked to earlier is not enough for you? hint: the bolded names are clickable archive files. Alriyadh, Alsharq Alawsat, ITP.net and islamonline.net are big names in ME reporting both online and printed. If that's not enough for you are you sure you're not promoting linguistic systematic bias? --Djihed (talk) 16:58, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - No, in fact I think the Arabeyes project is cool and if I could I would vote to keep this article because I like it. On the contrary, before I even seconded the original proposed deletion I searched for quite awhile trying to find a good English language source that I could use to counter the deletion, and I was able to find one only (which I mentioned above). If you are suggesting that I am biased against non-English sources, yes I am, because this is the English language Wikipedia. I can't read Arabic, nor can the vast majority of the people who use this version of Wikipedia, and I can neither verify nor vouch for sources written in that language. Now, I just noticed the cover story on the Middle-Eastern version of IT Republic. That seems notable enough for me to change my vote to neutral. Remember, the burden of proof is always on the side of those trying to keep an article, not those deleting it. Some of the other sources on that press page are either not in English, or don't give any depth of coverage at all (for example the Linux Journal link just barely mentions the project). --  At am a chat 18:20, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - What about two linux.com articles about Arabeyes's 2nd and 3rd anniversaries, http://www.linux.com/feature/30611 and http://www.linux.com/feature/37781 ? what about http://www.tacticaltech.org/node/213 too, and have a look at the middle east section here http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/. --خالد حسني (talk) 21:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - The Linux.com "articles" are IRC logs, that's all. Tacticaltech is a blog, and I don't even know what to make of the last link you provided. None of those are reliable sources per WP:RS. --  At am a chat 22:32, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - linux.com articles does clearly talk about Arabeyes, stating it rule in Arabising FOSS, the first article says "ArabEyes project does just what it sounds like it ought to do: Builds support for Arabic in the Unix/Linux environment." and the second one says "Arabeyes is self-described as "a Meta project that is aimed at fully supporting the Arabic language in the Unix/Linux environment." Since Arabeyes began, there have been several Arabic Linux distributions released, KDE has become usable in Arabic, plenty of work has been done on Mozilla and OpenOffice.org, and Linux has started to become recognized as a useful operating system in Arabic-speaking countries, at least among the geek-cognoscenti crowd." Which is reliable enough for an internet based project to help Arabising FOSS projects. If you looked at the "Middle East" tab in http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/ you will find "Arabeyes.org is a well-organized meta project that aims at fully supporting the Arabic language in the Free Libre Open Source Software environment. The project maintains an excellent web site which is well worth a visit. Khotot GNU General Public License  is Arabeyes' project to increase the number of available Arabic free and open source fonts. The site has a number of artistic Arabic fonts released under the GPL, and links to Farsi fonts as well." at the beginning of the page, which clearly states some of the project's achievements. The are several newspaper articles in Arabic too, I didn't know before that being in Arabic makes it unreliable sources. If you looked at http://l10n.kde.org/team-infos.php?teamcode=ar, http://l10n.gnome.org/teams/ar, https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Localization_Teams#Arabic_.28ar.29 (which are three major FOSS projects) you'll find that they are localised to Arabic by Arabeyes, which (to me at least) a reliable source of information. --خالد حسني (talk) 23:58, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Sources have been identified above. There is no requirement that sources should be in English. The "English" in "English Wikipedia" refers to the language in which the encyclopedia is written, not the language of its sources or of its article subjects. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:48, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - I take it you haven't read WP:NONENG then. --  At am a chat 18:17, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep and tag multiple issues. WikiScrubber (talk) 13:46, 1 September 2008 (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.