Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Publius (publishing system) (2nd nomination)


 * 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 though given the past keep consensus some deference to that should be given. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:23, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Publius (publishing system)
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log )

The subject of the article is and never was notable. The provided sources are either WP:OR or very weak retelling of them. Note: earlier AfD discussion is under a Articles for deletion/Publius Publishing System. Anton.bersh (talk) 11:35, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 11:46, 11 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment WP:OR is prohibited for Wikipedia editors, not for sources they use. Isn´t the intended meaning these sources aren´t independent enough on the article subject? Pavlor (talk) 10:09, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I meant that the provided sources don't seem sufficient for validation of the claims. The majority of article is just a summary of ideas presented by Publius creators in their research papers. Only the "Reception" section really has any third-party sources. I could access only "Divided Data Can Elude the Censor" article which basically consists of "[creator] said that [claim]". The other two articles seem to be gone from the face of the internet entirely. Is there a way to recover the linked coverage? Anton.bersh (talk) 12:44, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I was not able to find these two articles. Some sources are mentioned in the previous AfD (directly or indirectly): (AP),  (ZDNet),  (The Industry Standard). However, these extensively quote author of the article subject. There are also other language sources:,  (both heise.de). Pavlor (talk) 05:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Good job finding those sources, I'll try to incorporate technical info into the article in a bit (e.g, 100 kilobytes file limit). However, these sources strike me as full of speculation and future promisses which were obvoiusly never met. E.g., AP writes "after a two-month trial, a more refined version of the software will likely be released, Rubin said." Frankly, it looks like reporting on temporary popularity of a site which received a mild influx of first-time visitors because of earlier almost-promotional reporting. Anton.bersh (talk) 07:20, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I have updated the article with sources above. It's still pretty poor, but at least better than was before. Anton.bersh (talk) 13:44, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 12:59, 18 April 2021 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment I did my best to incorporate sources provided above, but there simply isn't much content about this system. (I'm the nominator and I still vote to delete unless someone steps up and improves the article further). Anton.bersh (talk) 13:44, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ~ Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 03:06, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. ~  Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 03:11, 26 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete "The experiment terminated sometime in 2001 with no significant results." says it all, really. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 09:46, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
 * KEEP. Anton.bersh did you review the first AFD?? It was a clear Keep because I posted a extensive Reliable Source coverage clearly establishing Notability. I will largely copy paste from the last AFD: Highly Notable project in the development history of internet technology. Historic developments regarding distributed systems, cryptography, anonymity, tamper-proof content, free-speech, and related legal implications.
 * New York Times Divided Data Can Elude the Censor
 * Scientific American Speech without accountability
 * Scientific American How Publius Thwarts Censors
 * Association for Computing Machinery Technical Report Fault-Tolerant Distributed Information Retrieval for Publius Servers and Mobile Peers
 * Annual Internet Law Institute, Volume 1
 * CiteSeerx reports that the academic paper Publius: A robust, tamper-evident, censorship-resistant, web publishing system has been cited by 232 other academic papers.
 * Google Book search for Publius distributed internet peer returns many book hits, including:
 * Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies
 * Irresistible Force: The Business Legacy of Napster and the Growth of the Underground Internet
 * Peer-to-Peer Systems: First International Workshop, IPTPS 2002, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 7-8, 2002, Revised Papers
 * Cyberspace & International Law on Jurisdiction: Possibilities of Dividing Cyberspace Into Jurisdictions with Help of Filters and Firewall Software
 * Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies: International Workshop on Design Issues in Anonymity and Unobservability, Berkeley, CA, USA, July 25-26, 2000. Proceedings
 * The Publius home page has (mostly dead) links to articles which count for Notability, and can be retrieved either in paper form or probably on Internet Archive sites:
 * The Industry Standard(9/13/2000)
 * The Industry Standard (8/21/2000)
 * eWeek
 * Yahoo News
 * Washington Post
 * CNET News 8/7/2000
 * CNET News 6/30/2000
 * Associated Press.
 * Credit to Pavlor for finding two articles in German Tech-news Heise.,
 * Also ping to Alexandermcnabb to reconsider, given the extensive and significant coverage in Reliable Sources. Alsee (talk) 20:54, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for posting this. I created this AfD because the first one closed with this:
 * The result was keep. Seems like Alsee's sources have gone uncontested, although Unscintillating's issues will need resolution.
 * I actually looked into the sources before creating this AfD and all these sources appeared to be almost verbatim reprinting of authors' narration. I wanted to hear other people's oppinion on this coverage. Frankly, the most notable aspect of this system is its creator, AT&T. Many of the popular media (news articles and semi-scientific publications intended for wide audience) repeat the same example of a Church silencing someone (an example cited in the original paper). Some articles claim false things like Publius being able to "verifiably delete" published data. Many of 232 papers citating Publius are actually either just mentioning it in a single sentence or not mentioning it at all (just refer to "peer-to-peer" and "content-addressible" systems). Please note that many papers which cite Publius are about quantitative analysis of peer-to-peer traffic on the internet around 2000-2005 and it's curious that they mention Publius (a network which had only a short trial and terminated in 2001) and omit BitTorrent (which launched at about the same time but without broad news coverage). I don't want to cross into WP:TRUTH, but from a technical perspective Publius was poorly designed (length of each key was roughly equal to length of the encrypted data, no discovery mechanism, etc.) At the time there already existed more advanced systems, but they didn't get much coverage because they didn't make any major proclamations. Anton.bersh (talk) 22:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep: It was agreed to be kept during the previous AfD. Article is still good enough to pass WP:GNG with reliable sources indicated above. ASTIG😎  (ICE T • ICE CUBE) 16:00, 3 May 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.