Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Code page 293


 * 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. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  17:17, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Code page 293

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No source, fails WP:V Roxy the dog. bark 09:08, 23 August 2017 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 11:12, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. it seems to have a source., and is perfectly usable. A Guy into Books (talk) 13:52, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:50, 31 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Obvious keep. Even the original version of the article was sourced with a top reliable reference (although badly formatted), showing that the nominator did neither attempt to do his homework (per WP:BEFORE) before nominating the article for deletion, nor made any (even trivial) attempts to improve the article (by formatting the given source correctly) as would have been his duty before nominating the article for deletion. If the nominator really was uncapable of identifying or reformatting the given source himself, he could have asked for sources via our established article improvement procedures instead of asking for deletion. This has been explained to the nominator several times already, therefore this must be seen as unconstructive behaviour.
 * In general, character sets of mass-produced computers and devices as well as those of significant solitaire machines (like those of the mainframe era) are important encyclopedic information, expected by readers to be provided by Wikipedia. They are highly sought after by computer historians, computer forensics, retro-computer users, and developers seeking for info on how to exchange and convert data and programs to/from modern systems. We therefore have a long-time project documenting character sets here at Wikipedia to achieve our goal of becoming a reliable reference for the knowledge of the world, past and present.
 * A codepage used by IBM mainframes and by APL is obviously notable.
 * The article fulfills our notability criteria (per WP:N) and is verified (per WP:V). But even if it wouldn't, WP:NPOSSIBLE would have applied, so the nomination is bogus. The nominator is wasting the time and energy of contributing editors.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:27, 5 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Addon information in regard to significance: I just looked it up, the APL codepages 293 and 907 are both supported by OS/2 Warp 3 (at least Fixpak 40 and higher, possibly earlier) as well. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 06:57, 9 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of data. I can't tell whether this was actually used at all.  There is no reason for an encyclopedia to transcribe the entire DOS Manual. Power~enwiki (talk) 21:02, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Huh? This is a codepage used by IBM mainframes and by APL, not by MS-DOS. You can be absolutely sure that codepages listed in IBM's CDRA were (or are) used, because they registered only codepages used by large corporations.
 * There are many more character sets in existance, some of them important, others not, but those registered by IBM and carrying a codepage number were (or are) without any doubt significant, otherwise they wouldn't have made it into the registry. That's why I wrote that the given reference is a top quality reference.
 * In general, our goal here in Wikipedia is to eventually become a top-reliable reference preserving and presenting the knowledge of the world, past and present, in encyclopedic form. Character sets are encyclopedic relevant information (unless they were/are for some unknown or home-brew machine or only used in a closed system with no interface to the outside world, so that there is nothing externally that had or has a need to interact with them). Character sets are also explained in other encyclopedias.
 * Unless we would start to document all (several thousand!) character sets ever in existance (which we are not trying to do) there is no risk to become an indiscriminate collection of data.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:44, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  J 947(c) (m) 04:47, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge to APL (codepage), where it is mentioned. As far as I can tell, code page 293 is an important version of an APL code. Codepages are unusually important for APL, a language with custom symbols and codes. Having all the APL codepage content under one article better serves our readers, and APL (codepage) is the better developed article. --Mark viking (talk) 21:41, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Most articles covering multiple character sets (like f.e. HP Roman) are about sets of similarly arranged characters, whereas in this case the resulting article would have to discuss a number of vastly different EBCDIC and ASCII based arrangements, but I agree that discussing them all in one place might have some value in itself. However, IMO it only makes sense if we'd merge all APL-related character sets into a single article, including codepage 293, codepage 907, IR-68 and a few more that exist, and if we'd do it without deleting information. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 06:37, 9 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Either keep or take the big redlink eraser to about 50% of the "Character encodings" navbox (see e.g. APL (codepage). I can't make out why this one would be regarded as less notable than the rest of its ilk, and the given source is indisputably valid. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:14, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep Per Matthias. Do these sets count as lists? L3X1 (distænt write)  13:41, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep. I'm really conflicted here.  On the one hand, I doubt this meets WP:GNG.  On the other hand, the basic concept of different character sets and/or codepages is clearly an important topic.  It's also useful to archive information about all of these historical codepages somewhere.  The question is whether wikipedia is the right place.  I don't have a good answer for that.  If there were some other stable/durable place where this information was archived, then I'd say we don't need it.  But, I don't know of such a place (codepageapedia, anyone?).  Given that no better archive exists, I think it's reasonable to bend our rules a bit and say keep it here.  I'd also like to see a general policy statement emerge, rather than having this same debate over and over for each individual example.  -- RoySmith (talk) 14:09, 15 September 2017 (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.