Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Napier88


 * 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. Michig (talk) 07:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Napier88

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Hopeless NN stub. (Thanks to the bot+Padenton, one of my twenty open "AFD step III" tabs finally indicated success in the form of an edit conflict, so far for mobile broadband at modem speed.) –Be..anyone (talk) 20:24, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2015 April 4.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 20:46, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  20:50, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  20:50, 4 April 2015 (UTC)


 * keep We don't delete articles for being "hopeless", we fix them instead. We certainly don't delete them for being stubs.
 * As to non-notability (such an easy nomination), then that appears to be on the basis that "Anything pre-dating the Web didn't happen". Looking at academic sources from 2000 and earlier, Napier88 garnered plenty of serious discussion, well above WP:N. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:57, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Feel free to convert one of the "plenty of serious discussion" into a reference, all I see is an unsourced dead language with one author. I stumbled over it in a contested PROD without old prod full in the last step of a new PROD, and the whole "easy nomination" took me about an hour. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:14, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Then your google-fu is weak. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Then, young grasshopper, show us how it's done and expand the article or post the sources that you found so someone else can. Your keep vote without providing any policy rationale or even providing any evidence to suggest the subject's notability, is just as useless as what you're criticizing. &#8213; Padenton &#124;&#9993;  19:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It is mentioned in passing in this 1995 thesis paper (Chapter 11). I would personally tend towards keep. Ceannlann gorm (talk) 22:27, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It's mentioned in a vast range of academic work from Scotland. As for a number of other languages strongly associated with particular institutions (from Scheme at MIT right back to BCPL at Cambridge), this was the lingua franca of teaching and research, so any abstract concept being worked on at St Andrews would tend to be explained in terms of it. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. Google scholar finds around 500 publications that mention Napier88 and about 240 that cite the Napier reference manual. I think that's pretty significant for a 25-year-old experimental programming language. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:23, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment The article states "The language, however, was only intended to provide a proof of concept for an experiment in persistent programming" - I'd prefer to see more than a passing mention in a thesis as an indication of notability. Do the numerous publications that 'mention' this language do anything more than list it as one of a load of experiments, or show that it was of significance on the development of later languages? I always worry slightly when people say "Oh yes, there's loads of stuff out there that proves the Moon is not Cheddar but is Wensleydale with veins of Lancashire - and don't produce any of these sources... Peridon (talk) 17:24, 6 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Weak Delete/Merge (Disclaimer: I was the initial PROD'er.): I took a look at the google scholar search.  is the user manual for it (written by the creator) and it's cited by 250. I don't know enough about Google Scholar, but it seems a lot of the search results are marked [Citation], are they just papers that aren't available freely on the web?  The highest cited paper not written by the creator is 18 citations and it goes downhill quickly from there, with almost all of the papers having no citations or single digit citations.  It's certainly not just random crap someone made up one day, but perhaps it would be more appropriate as a section in Ron Morrison.  It seems to be a dead language (mostly exclusive use to St Andrews it seems), so there's little likelihood of it reaching notability if it doesn't have it now.  &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  20:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I would think that a hit marked 'citation' is just that - the paper is about something else but cites Napier88. I could be wrong. I would think a section or whatever in Ron Morrison's article would be the best procedure, leaving this title as a redirect. Peridon (talk) 20:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: From the looks of that manual, maintenance/updating of the language seems to have resumed sometime around the mid-1990s, for a time at least. Ceannlann gorm (talk) 21:32, 6 April 2015 (UTC)


 * "It seems to be a dead language (mostly exclusive use to St Andrews it seems), so there's little likelihood of it reaching notability"
 * Why? You seem to think that notability is dependent upon both global scope, and upon currency. Neither is true.  Neither is St Andrews (especially for CompSci) the equivalent of East Podunk State College.  Would you delete Smalltalk because "Not used much outside PARC"?  Andy Dingley (talk) 22:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Nice hatchet job there, cutting off the rest of my sentence. Try reading it one more time: "It seems to be a dead language (mostly exclusive use to St Andrews it seems), so there's little likelihood of it reaching notability if it doesn't have it now."&#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  00:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, I read it alright, just didn't reckon much to your argument. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Clearly not, as your response to it makes no sense whatsoever. &#8213; Padenton &#124;&#9993;  16:16, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep Typing this in Google Scholar reveals several publications which are all well-cited (many citations by papers of many different authors, several of which are themselves well-cited). Skimming some of these reveals that this language has been influential in the area of persistent systems (a hot research in the late '80s/early '90s, not so much today). Doesn't even look like a borderline case to me. —Ruud 21:24, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep, sufficient reliable sources to go around with Google Scholar. - Mailer Diablo 02:02, 12 April 2015 (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.