Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Code smell

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was keep

It's short, relatively uninformative, and unlikely to blossom into a better entry. As had previously been remarked on its Talk page, the idea of "smelly code" could just as easily be described somewhere else. This page title could be kept as a redirect. - Furrykef 00:18, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Keep, but move somewhere else. Perhaps a unified list page could be created for all such hacker/coder jargon? There doesn't appear to be one right now. Suntiger 00:32, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Not within Wikipedia, no, but the Jargon File is pretty huge, and dynamically maintained. I think both Wikipedia and Wiktionary should steer clear of the Jargon File's turf and should speak about things, rather than define them. Geogre 11:52, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Merge into anti-pattern, together with some of the other small stubs you can find in the list there. cesarb 01:42, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, obscure. I'm a computer programmer, and I've never heard of this. --Shibboleth 07:48, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, perhaps merge into anti-pattern. ··gracefool |&#9786; 09:12, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Wiki:CodeSmell. I rest my case. Kim Bruning 04:05, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's enough to rest your case. You also need to show that it deserves a whole encyclopedia article. - Furrykef 04:22, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * The wardwiki page in question contains quite enough justification. It provides a large number of references, and is referred to quite heavily. 2,210 google hits for "code smell" and 556,000 for code smell (no quotes) by the way. Kim Bruning 07:28, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * The latter number of hits isn't necessarily relevant; nevertheless, I vote to keep. -Sean Curtin 19:55, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)
 * And what makes that especially suited to an entire encyclopedia entry instead of, say, an exhaustive dictionary entry that Wiktionary might provide? Wikipedia is not a dictionary. I'm not saying it's not to be without mention, but is an entire article encyclopedic as opposed to, say, a brief description on anti-pattern? (That would be a good home for it, IMHO, since it's strongly related to anti-patterns, but I don't think it's an anti-pattern itself because it's not specific enough. Gut reactions don't make anti-patterns.) - Furrykef 08:45, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Are you basing this argument on the content of the wardwiki page? Kim Bruning 09:39, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Not particularly. I did review it, but it does not change my judgement. Moreover, much of what is discussed there is not specific to the notion of "code smell". - Furrykef 23:22, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I see. Why didn't it change your judgement? Kim Bruning 16:18, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Why should it? Let's see, it starts by defining the term. OK, but again, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. This definition and the following paragraph do little more than state that "detecting a code smell" is simply the intuitive sense that something is wrong with the code. Any good programmer has such an intuitive sense, but only a small, perhaps even tiny, subset of these programmers use the term "code smell". Thus, what "code smell" defines is more broad than the term itself, and what you call it is unimportant. Classifying it under "code smell" in an encyclopedia gives undue importance to the name; I could just create an article called Bad code design and say essentially the same things but it'd seem somehow different. Furthermore, as for the contents of that wardwiki page, almost everything in the list of code smells is an antipattern, and all of them if the term "antipattern" is applied broadly to include ideas like "vague identifiers". So if the verdict were entirely up to me, I would explain the notion of code smells in anti-pattern. - Furrykef 12:22, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * The wardwiki is also authoritative on antipattern, according to google. Would you hazard a guess why the authoritative source for these two terms has them separate? Or do you think wardwiki needs refactoring wrt this topic? Kim Bruning 15:16, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * In fact, code smell and antipattern seem to be totally different, according to wardwiki at least. :-) Kim Bruning 15:26, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * According to wikipedia also. RTFA please! Code smell is already a breakout from anti-pattern. Antipatterns should be merged or kept split as a block. so Keep or Delete ALL. Kim Bruning 08:34, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete - smells like a delete - T&#949;x  &#964;  ur&#949;  00:25, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Very common term, with a number of papers (and a large number of books) published discussing the concept. James F. (talk) 08:41, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * But it seems to me that a "code smell" is just an indication of bad design, which I'm sure has been discussed in quite a larger number of papers and books. What makes "code smell" special? Why wouldn't it fit under "anti-pattern" or some article about bad software design? - Furrykef 16:46, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.