Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bitcoin Core


 * 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 merge to Bitcoin. There is a consensus here that a standalone article is inappropriate, and that some material may be salvageable. The SIZESPLIT concern at the target is valid, but did not receive sufficient consideration, and the target is not so large that size becomes an overwhelming concern. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:10, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Bitcoin Core

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Since the Bitcoin network is dominated by Bitcoin Core nodes, it makes no sense to have a separate article on Bitcoin Core. Furthermore, the article has only industry sources that are vested in Bitcoin being popular, like "Bitcoin Magazine", which was founded by Vitalik Buterin (now Ethereum). And Andreas Antonopoulos is selling a Bitcoin related book. There are no general news coverage, which is required per GNG. Ysangkok (talk) 00:28, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge I think Bitcoin Core as a software has not gain notability independent from Bitcoin. Since software and its protocol is an important part of Bitcoin technology. I propose the content should be merge with Bitcoin. xinbenlv  Talk, Remember to "ping" me 00:55, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete not interesting outside of the subject of Bitcoin. Articles like this just tend to gather bits of rapidly outdated minutia and highly uneven coverage. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:10, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 02:25, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Gmaxwell, it is inappropriate for you to be pushing deletion for an organization you have been associated with and may have received compensation from. The definition of WP:COI. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:44, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Bitcoin core is piece of open source software, it's not an organization (so much for demonstrating your understanding of the subject matter...). It has never compensated me or AFAIK anyone else nor would it have any means to do so. I also haven't been involved with it for years. Your allegation is extremely insulting, particularly because the only reason I commented here is because my input was specifically requested. To suggest that any of the nearly thousand people who made contributions to it can't state their view on removing an article about it is not only contrary to Wikipedia policy, but also not in the interest of good editorship. --Gmaxwell (talk) 10:52, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: Jtbobwaysf just edited the article to insert content regarding me (where none was previously present) in an apparent retaliation for my opinion that the article should be deleted. The claim regarding me is also factually false, further highlighting the difficulty of providing accurate coverage for a niche subject of only domain specific interest and the rest of the substance of his edit is only incidentally about Bitcoin Core and instead turn the article into a bitcoin block size debate coatrack.--Gmaxwell (talk) 11:03, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * this isn't correct - involved editors, even article subjects, can comment on an AFD just fine - David Gerard (talk) 12:25, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * David, thanks for clarification. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , I deny adding it as retaliation as you allege. I did add a number of sources to demonstrate notability, as is common to do after an article is nominated for AfD. You point out that I may misunderstand the definition of Bitcoin Core, I had thought it was also an organization of sorts. If it is just an open source software, and what I am referring to relates to the Bitcoin scalability problem, then I am indeed misunderstanding. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge The article has decent sources and has valuable enough information that it should be merged into the main Bitcoin article. Since Bitcoin doesn't have a "specification" aside from the code of Bitcoin Core, I think this information best lives inside the main Bitcoin article. --Molochmeditates (talk) 03:53, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 09:49, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep this refers to an implementation of bitcoin and is subject of widespread coverage and controversy. Added a few sources today, the nominator didnt do their duty to check this for RS prior to nomination. I added today NYT, WSJ, Financial Times, New Yorker, etc. Frivolous nomination, the article does need cleanup, but it easily passes WP:GNG. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:54, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * . Hi! I am so happy you entered the discussion, I appreciate your input a lot. I think that the NewYorker piece is not actually about software, it is about the drama. There are so many Bitcoin clients, and their drama is inseparable. Like, we have Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited. Wouldn't it make more sense to cover all of it in an article called Bitcoin drama? A reader that sees the NewYorker article and wants to read more drama, has to make an arbitrary choice between looking at the Bitcoin Core article and the Bitcoin XT article (which I have also nominated for deletion, your input is appreciated there too!). Why confuse the reader like that? It should be covered centrally since it is an intertwined story. --Ysangkok (talk) 17:35, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I dont think "bitcoin drama" would be a good article title. Are you proposing that? Or are you making light of an AfD discussion? Jtbobwaysf (talk)
 * hey, please address my points instead of bikeshedding. It doesn't matter what the article is called. Actually, it exists already and is called Bitcoin scalability problem, even though I don't think it is a meaningful name. --Ysangkok (talk) 21:09, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Bikeshedding? Never heard of that, but upon googling it, it appears to be what we editors do at wikipedia ;-) Was the question if we should merge all of these articles to Bitcoin Scalability Problem? If that is the question, I think it would be ok with the exception of this particular article that you have nominated. It appears you nominated all of your above mentioned articles for AfD over the past couple of days, as well as started a debate over at Reliable_sources/Noticeboard if Bitcoin Magazine could be used as an RS. If it could (I am opposed to that), it would add dozens of additional sources to the same articles you have nominated for AfD. Might have been easier to discuss on one of the talk pages first, rather than proposing a new article on this AfD called Bitcoin drama (If that was your intention), calling into question the RS we use, and nominating a handful of articles all at the same time. As Ladislav points out below, a wholesale merge of 5 or so articles to the main article is also not a reasonable suggestion, nor is delete in the case of this article, as this article itself has dozens of RS (just look at google books and news, it is in fact hard to browse through google news as there are so many low quality sources). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 14:51, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete I agree with arguments made by . I also agree with that it is fine for  to discuss the deletion of the article. I note that the recent edit by  that a specific person is a notable developer of Bitcoin Core does not look encyclopedic in the form in which he added it to the article. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 12:43, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to Bitcoin or somewhere - it's not like there are multiple popular implementations - David Gerard (talk) 12:49, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note that we had this discussion once before, and the result was merge: Articles for deletion/Bitcoin-Qt. --Ysangkok (talk) 17:09, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Ysangkok (talk) 18:03, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge Not notable enough in itself to have an article, but it has some good sources. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 21:55, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment I was asked to comment on this AfD. I do not believe that this was canvassing, because I am known to be neutral on those aspects of bitcoin that generate so much heat; my interest is in the mathematical details of the cryptography and the engineering details of the mining hardware. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:00, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge. Second choice Delete. Fails GNG; none of the sources in this article establish notability as something different from Bitcoin. Please note that the citations to The New Yorker and MIT Technology Review fail to mention Bitcoin Core. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:00, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * the New Yorker source is all about Bitcoin Core, please read it. It starts out saying : "Aterrific rumpus broke out in the world of Bitcoin last week, when veteran developers Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn published Bitcoin XT, a competing version of Bitcoin Core..." This type of indepth coverage by a top shelf non-crypto source is key to demonstrating notability. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 06:54, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * the New Yorker article is a reporting on a drama, not actually talking about software. That is why it is not "all about Bitcoin Core". The cryptocurrency scene is full of people getting angry at each other and media will happily write about it. To write about it, you need to give the parties names, in this case it was XT and Core. It does not mean that the coverage is sufficient just because the subject matter in question was named. --Ysangkok (talk) 23:53, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Again referring to the "bitcoin drama" concept that doesnt seem to relate to this discussion, or at least you haven't answered above if you were suggesting creating a Bitcoin Drama article. You admit that the media has given a name "Bitcoin Core" name to one of groups the belligerents in the block size debate. If that is the case, then we would cover that in this naming issue in the article, maybe with a section on that treatment, saying the article refers to two concepts (software and a name of a group of people, and maybe that naming is incorrect or disputed as Greg points out). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:48, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Do not merge to Bitcoin. The Bitcoin article was marked as too long and split to subpages such as History of bitcoin, Economics of bitcoin, etc. After those splits, the prose size of the Bitcoin article is 48,273 characters at present. Seeing proposals to merge several articles into it including this one, I am afraid that the prose would become unreadable. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 13:11, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ysangkok (talk) 17:44, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - The technology is notable because it is the core implementation of Bitcoin. The existence of a separate page is justified by WP:SUMMARY. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 18:32, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , there is no "Core" of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a set of undocumented protocols, any piece of software that implements them 'correctly' will constitute Bitcoin. In fact, it has happened (in bugs and fixes) that Bitcoin "hard-forked" and broke backwards compatibility. In those cases, actually the thing people mean when they say "Bitcoin" would refer to the abstract concept of the Bitcoin protocols as they are supposed to work, as it was before a bug was addressed with a hard-fork. After the fact, you observe whether the fork was accepted, and then the new hard fork can be a new concrete manifestation of whatever protocol people mean when they Bitcoin. So it is naïve to say that Bitcoin Core defines Bitcoin. Furthermore you are not addressing the issue of reliable sources. Even if you were correct, we would still not be able to keep the article since there are no independent sources with anything meaningful to say about the actual software, everybody is talking about politics and economics. --Ysangkok (talk) 19:01, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * This is incorrect. "Bitcoin Core" refers to a software implementation AND a group of developers that develop it. You are talking about not having a "Bitcoin core", with a small "c". This article refers to the proper name of a group (thus the big "C" word Core), and it is not referring to a core of anything. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 06:47, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * if you think the group of people developing Bitcoin Core is notable, then find me a reference that supports that. My argument  (which was refuting Chalst's argument, and not redefining Core as some social construct as you do) is that Core would indeed be more notable if it was a central piece of how Bitcoin works. But given that Chalst has not responded, it is likely that they now know, as you should, that Core does not define what Bitcoin is, and that it is simply a bunch of code like so much other, and that we do not have any proper references about said code to justify having an article about it. --Ysangkok (talk) 23:46, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * In this edit above you refer to the media using names to represent the sides of the argument (which sounds like my argument), and one of those names is Bitcoin Core. Immediately above you are arguing that Core is the name for the software, and not the group of people (which is Charles and Greg's argument). It is not correct to demand Charles to respond to your ping on an AfD and then state that he must have changed his view if he doesnt respond... Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:48, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ysangkok (talk) 00:17, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete After a lengthy discussion, it's clear that the sources do not discuss Bitcoin Core in any significant way. It needs more than just mentions. – FenixFeather (talk) (Contribs) 00:30, 15 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.