Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flix (programming language)


 * 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 keep. I think we have at least a weak consensus to keep this, though it may be that this gets revisited. Drmies (talk) 01:33, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Flix (programming language)

 * – ( View AfD View log )

No evidence of notability.

Created by editor with COI. See Conflict of interest/Noticeboard --Guy Macon (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Guy Macon (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment: I'm not voting, but I'm just mentioning some things. COI editors are told to go through AFC and mention their COI (which they did on the article's talk page). I approved the draft because I think that it has some chance of being notable based on where it was developed and who funded it. I also took into account that it could potentially be merged into a related article if it doesn't have independent notability per an AfD. While I do agree that notability is a concern, I don't think the warning tag on the creator's talk page about COI was acceptable. SL93 (talk) 18:17, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I saw 160 edits by JorKadeen in the history of the Flix_(programming_language) page. I didn't catch the fact that those were done in userspace and then the history was moved. I have recommended that the COIN case be closed with no action required. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:50, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It's fine. I'm sorry if I came across as rude. I should have realized that it was simply you not noticing. SL93 (talk) 20:58, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep: The research behind this language has a good reputation in a subfield, implementation of DATALOG-based languages, whose importance is seeing a surge of recent recognition (cf. Huang, Green & Loo 2011, Datalog and Emerging Applications: An Interactive Tutorial). The article that introduced the language implementation effort has an h-index of 11, respectable for a 4-y.o. language. The article is well-written, with less puffery than is typical for PL articles without a trace of CoI editing. As a general point, I think this AfD is undermining to the AfC process: if an article graduates from the AfC process, a little care putting together the AfD is in order, and to give as the whole deletion rationale "No evidence of notability" is careless when the first paragraph of the article ends "Two notable features of Flix are its type and effect system and its support for first-class Datalog constraints" and the references section contains two peer-reviewed articles whose title mentions that language by name. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 20:19, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * As I said, I saw 160 edits by JorKadeen in the history of the Flix (programming_language) page. I didn't catch the fact that those were done in userspace and then the history was moved. I have apologized for my error, but let me apologize again: sorry about that.
 * WP:NSOFT has the following criteria:
 * "It is discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field. References that cite trivia do not fulfill this requirement."
 * Maybe. Could you please list the reliable sources discuss Flix as being significant in its particular field? The source you cite above ( Datalog and Emerging Applications: An Interactive Tutorial). does not contain the word "Flix". It says "We discuss two active commercial systems, LogicBlox and Semmle", "We also review two important academic systems from the classical age of Datalog research, Coral and LDL++", and "Finally, we highlight the ongoing BOOM project, based on a Datalog dialect called Dedalus" (I believe that this is the BOOM project at [ http://boom.cs.berkeley.edu/ ] not the one at [ https://www.theboomprojectbook.com/ ] that shows up in a Google search.)
 * "It is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs. This criterion does not apply to software merely used in instruction."
 * Nope, Flix fails this one.
 * "It is the subject of multiple printed third-party manuals, instruction books, or reliable reviews,[2] written by independent authors and published by independent publishers."
 * Nope.
 * "It has been recognized as having historical or technical significance by reliable sources. However, the mere existence of reviews does not mean the app is notable. Reviews must be significant, from a reliable source, or assert notability."
 * Nope again.
 * In addition, most of the sources are papers by authors of the language (Magnus Madsen) you tube videos by the same authors or citations to flix.dev.
 * The last thing I want to do is to step on any AFC toes, but if you are going to claim that we need to "take extra care if an article graduates from the AfC process" then when the page leaves AFC it should clearly show that reliable secondary sources establish notability. I should have looked at the page and seen that it was obviously notable. Instead here I am, asking you for evidence of notability after you cited as evidence an abstract that doesn't mention Flix. I suspect that the full paper either doesn't mention Flix or only mentions it in passing. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry: my complaints were rather heavy-handed in my comment; it can be easy to overlook that an article indeed graduated from the AfC process. With regards to notablity, the article I linked to predates Flix by several years and is about the recent resurgence of interest in Datalog in general and discusses several desirable features for software support that Flix satisfies; for an article that indicates what the motivation of Flix is in particular and how it is well-suited to achieve it, look at Flix and its Implementation: A Language for Static Analysis which situates the value of Datalog-like languages in expressing static analyses declaratively and the value of particular original features of Flix with regards to this goal, namely the ability to specify arbitrary lattices as constraints on Datalog queries and the value of being able to manipulate Datalog programs as first-class values. Static analysis is a fundamental technique used in compiler optimisation. With regards to NSOFT, I think the references meet the 1st criterion. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 06:45, 24 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment:
 * Flix is being developed at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University (AU) [ https://cs.au.dk/research/programming-languages/projects/ ]. AU is the top-ranked CS department in Denmark (according to the Times Higher Ed [ https://cs.au.dk/news-events/pages/2021-the-world-university-ranking/ ]).
 * Research on Flix is supported by a grant of 2.5M DKK (~400,000 USD) from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DDF), a public funding agency in Denmark (see article ref 2).
 * Flix is the subject of 2 papers published at OOPSLA and 1 paper published at PLDI (see article ref 12, 5, 6). OOPSLA and PLDI are both considered top-venues for programming language research. Both are ranked A+ by CORE [ https://www.core.edu.au/ ]. OOPSLA and PLDI are peer-reviewed, double blind, conferences that are part of the PACMPL journal [ https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmpl ].
 * The original Flix paper (see article ref 12), now 4 years old, has 59 citations according to Google Scholar. This includes papers published at other A+ ranked conferences, including POPL, ICFP, and OOPSLA.
 * A selection of non-trivial references to Flix with between a few sentences or multiple paragraphs of text (this is not a complete list nor is it in any particular order and can be added to the references of the article):
 * Datafun: A Functional Datalog [ https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nk480/datafun.pdf ] - Arntzenius et al. - ICFP research paper.
 * Seminaïve Evaluation for a Higher-Order FunctionalLanguage [ https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nk480/seminaive-datafun.pdf ] - Arntzenius et al. - POPL research paper.
 * Automatically Testing Implementations of Numerical Abstract Domains [ https://mariachris.github.io/Pubs/ASE-2018.pdf ] - Bugariu et al. - ASE research paper.
 * Sound and Reusable Components for Abstract Interpretation [ https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360602 ] - Keidel et al. - OOPSLA research paper.
 * Testing Static Analyses for Precision and Soundness [ https://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/cgo20.pdf ] - Taneja et al. - CGO research paper.
 * Securify: Practical Security Analysis of Smart Contracts [ https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.01143.pdf ] - Tsankov et al. - CCS research paper.
 * Formulog: Datalog for SMT-Based Static Analysis [ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.08361.pdf ] - Bembenek et al. - OOPSLA research paper.
 * Self-adaptive static analysis [ https://bodden.de/pubs/bodden18selfadaptive.pdf ] - Bodden - ICSE 18 research paper.
 * FlowSpec: Declarative Dataflow AnalysisSpecification [ https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3136014.3136029 ] - Smits et al. - SLE research paper.
 * Incrementalizing Lattice-Based Program Analyses in Datalog [ https://szabta89.github.io/publications/inca-oopsla.pdf ] - Szabo - OOPSLA research paper.
 * EXTENDING PARALLEL DATALOG WITH LATTICE [ https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/17756qxg2 ] - Qing Gong - PhD Thesis, Pennsylvania State University. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JorKadeen (talk • contribs) 14:16, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Flix is the subject of additional papers published at ISSTA, CC, and PPDP (ranked A, A, and B by CORE). These venues are also peer-reviewed.
 * Flix is used as part of two courses at AU; a pre-talent track course on logic programming and a master-level course on program analysis.
 * Flix has been the subject of multiple bachelor/master theses at Aarhus University and at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
 * Flix has been discussed multiple times on Reddit, HackerNews, LambdaTheUltimate, and other social media.
 * As stated on the talk page and on the article talk page, I have a conflict of interest. JorKadeen (talk) 13:43, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

If you have them, please add links for the above sources so that any editor can go there and verify the claim. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 14:55, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep: has been discussed on Reddit per the strength of the peer-reviewed sources above and in the article. Bachelor's/Master's theses aren't really significant but there's plenty that is. — Bilorv ( talk ) 18:12, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Danish folk have a particular skill in developing programming languages and this shows promise.   scope_creep Talk  20:43, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * How are the Danes at cooking, car repair and log-throwing? I believe we may have some missing articles if notability is connected to country of origin! Possibly (talk) 01:27, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete the way they have gone about this is wrong, and the article in its current state is promotional and inadequately sourced. I counted 18/29 references as being non-independent. JorKadeen above apparently works for them. This is plainly a promotional effort and the article in its current state does not show enough in the way of recognition in good, independent sources. As is often said, please do not make article about yourself; if you are notable, someone else will do it independently. Possibly (talk) 20:23, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This article went through the AfC process with declared COI. JorKadeen (talk) 21:37, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * W.r.t. sourcing, please see the above list of peer-reviewed research literature. These references can be used to supplement or replace the references currently in the article. JorKadeen (talk) 21:37, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Please let those without a stake in the article discuss it. Possibly (talk) 22:34, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The way this article has been created is exactly as is recommended in the AfC process: has done no editing of this article in article space, only in user and draftspace, and the article was promoted from draftspace by  after it had been there with the AfC review notice for about 10 weeks. Apart from a little, easily corrected, language in the Overview section, I do not find anything in the article to be at all promotional: could you be more specific? &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 06:57, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * If we allow it to be in the wiki, we have been gamed. The article contains very few independent sources. Anything with Magnus Madsen is not independent. Anything with Flix.dev in the source is not independent. Once I remove those items from the 29 sources provided, there are perhaps six sources or so that might be RS. I cannot see them though, and they appear to be theses and the like. These sources and text have been placed on wiki (in draft) by a COI editor, who also advocates for it above in this discussion. The article itself is a whopping 50KB. the article on PHP is 112KB by comparison. This a huge puffed-up article for something supported by very few in-depth sources. it is an advertising effort. It is not as important as it makes itself out to be. Possibly (talk) 05:51, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I replied to your !vote because your delete rationale began with a false accusation. I do not care if Wikipedia is 'gamed' if that results in well-written, neutral, verifiable articles being produced without causing undue work for the Wikipedia community. I count four peer-reviewed articles among the sources that substantively discuss Flix coming from three entirely independent research efforts. Additionally, articles written by project members that are published in peer-reviewed conference proceedings and journals are reliable, though not neutral, sources - while they will not count towards SIGCOV, they are perfectly acceptable sources per WP:V - but your delete rationale seems to be treating these sources as if they were self-published or advertising materials. You have provided no delete rationale that is consistent with both the facts and policy (article length is not an accepted delete justification, cf. WP:ASZ). &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 07:49, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete - The vast majority of the citations on this article are primary sources, and on deeper examination, those that are not sourced directly to Flix are to papers written by those who are affiliated with the lab at the university where this prog lang was developed. Pure unadulterated WP:PROMO. It does nothing for the integrity of the encyclopedia to include this sort of COI material. These non-independent sources do not constitute SIGCOV whatsoever. Fails our policy/guideline criteria for notability. Netherzone (talk) 02:59, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The work on Flix is referenced by researchers on rival projects: Datafun (see Arntzenius & Krishnaswami 2020) and IncA (see Szabó, Bergmann, Erdweg & Voelter 2018); both of these works by unaffiliated and critical researchers are referenced in the article. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 07:15, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: As the editor that accepted the AFC submission, I am convinced by the deletion arguments that the sources are not independent of the subject. Votes such as "Danish folk have a particular skill in developing programming languages and this shows promise." never sway me either. An alternative could be sending it back to AFC, but I really don't think it's necessary unless notability can be show here. SL93 (talk) 16:41, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   08:53, 28 December 2020 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment Was rated C-Class in AfC. – Cupper 52 Discuss! 10:59, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It was certainly not start-class or stub-class with its length so I chose the next status which was C. I, as the AfC reviewer, now agree with its deletion so I don't think the rating I gave it is relevant. SL93 (talk) 11:05, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep There are numerous articles and papers in which this programming language is mentioned. LeBron4 (talk) 15:20, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Let us at least give it time to be more noticed by independent sources, which seems likely. --Bduke (talk) 00:13, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:55, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: The sources listed so far do not establish notability. For example, go to or  and search on the word "Fix". I can do a web search myself and find every page that mentions Flix in passing. Can someone please name some sources that contain significant coverage? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:26, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Three sources, from my comments above, which are peer-reviewed articles from rival researchers:
 * Arntzenius & Krishnaswami 2020, 2nd work citing Flix from the DataFun team;
 * Szabó, Bergmann, Erdweg & Voelter 2018, from the IncA team;
 * Bodden 2018, a kind of position statement from the Heinz-Nixdorf Institute's (Paderborn, Germany) working group in Software Engineering.
 * All are substantive, all have positive things to say about Flix, all argue for different approaches than the Flix team does. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 07:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Changing my position to Neutral based upon the above. I may change this to keep after I actually read the citations. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:35, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Chalst's sources show this meets GNG; it is debable by how much, but it is definitely across the line.  // Timothy ::  talk  00:32, 10 January 2021 (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.