Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Base58


 * 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 delete. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:48, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Base58

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This is an obscure implementation detail of Bitcoin Core (base58 encoding does not exist in the blockchain). There are no reliable sources, and the IPFS hashes work differently too (see talk page), so it makes little sense to have one article generalizing over both these encodings. The article is currently citing exclusively unreliable sources like the Bitcoin Wiki (not a reliable source since it is an open wiki) and Flickr documentation (self-published). Github cannot be cited either, that is a primary source for the IPFS claims. The book may be citable, but given that the subject is so obscure, I don't think it makes sense to have this article. Ysangkok (talk) 17:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Ysangkok (talk) 17:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete or Merge with List of bitcoin forks Fails WP:GNG. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 18:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * how does this belong in a list of forks? I don't understand, could you explain? --Ysangkok (talk) 19:06, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Wait you're right. I thought it has something to do with Bitcoin Classic... P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 19:11, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:33, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete: Fails WP:GNG. Anyone can come up with a new way of encoding Base2 (binary) in some other base. They might even get it mentioned in passing in a few sources. And creating an implementation in various languages would be trivial. I could create, say, Base11 (for Spinal Tap fans) and Base666 (for use by daemons), write up some routines for Python, C, Forth, GW-BASIC, LOLCODE and Whitespace, and publish them on GitHub. Notability? Not so easy. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:13, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like someone already had the Base11 idea. See Base 11. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:18, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Merge to . We certainly do not have the sources to argue notability here. I removed the github and wiki sources, leaving on a single book (with admittedly good coverage) and some technical documentation from Flickr. But the one source, and a sentence or two from the article, would be well-suited to the table of bases in the merge target. BenKuykendall (talk) 04:20, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: Nothing special with this encoding base 2, this is not a notable issue. Nika2020 (talk) 22:28, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ysangkok (talk) 16:10, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Do not delete: This is pretty useful to show document IDs in URLs. We are using this in our products. I always refer to this page new developers to read about it. I do not get why delete it at all. It is a valid concept used in software in practice. I do not get an argument that "book might be citable" but that this is not enough. Why not? And obscure? There are 110 packages only on NPM implementing base58. I would not call this obscure? GitHub finds 333 repositories in all possible programming languages. There is a Debian package. And Google finds about 1,950,000 results when searching for base58. Mitar (talk) 18:43, 9 July 2020 (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.