Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ratpoison (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   speedy keep. Enough souces found for my view of WP:GNG. (non-admin closure) Pcap ping  19:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Ratpoison
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

After I speedily closed the previous AfD as a gentlemen's agreement to redirect, an anonymous editor has reverted the redirect. So, nominating again. This time I'll let an admin decide.

My (re)nomination is: This tiling window manager gets mentioned alongside others in lists in various books  and articles, but there's nothing in-depth in reliable secondary sources to justify a separate article, and we have an article on this type of product, which mentions ratpoison at a level of detail commensurate with coverage in reliable secondary sources.

Before anyone raises more procedural red herrings, I'll point out that the normal procedure for an AfD-decided redirect is to first delete the article's history, then redirect. So an AfD is entirely appropriate in order to complete the first step; see this for example. Pcap ping  12:10, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Speedy Keep, as the nominator doesn't seem to want this deleted & there has been absolutely no arguments made for deletion.
 * In the last nomination, I suggested that the nominator (who acknowledged that he would be fine with a merge) use the merge templates & discuss on the talk page for the respective articles whether the two should be merged. Pcap took it upon himself to make this merge with no discussion.  I did not revert him; I'm ambivalent about a merge, but I am not surprised it was reverted.  Pcap doesn't seem to actually want deletion & has even given example sources that are reliable and secondary and surely cover the few facts listed in this brief stub.
 * There is no reason to delete the page history. Not all merge/redirected articles have their history wiped & the history of this stub is not sullied by a copyvio or any other compelling reason to abandon the history.  The GFDL would would discourage page history deletion if content was merged.
 * --Karnesky (talk) 00:53, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The topic doesn't meet the usual standard for a standalone article, and it's already included in tiling window manager in WP:DUE detail. Since the redirect has been edit warred over, we need to gain broader consensus, which won't happen on the article's talk page edited by anonymous WP:ILIKEIT users plus you. That's why we are here. Pcap ping  02:13, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As I argued previously, WP:N is met for the limited content provided (there is no need for original research for the article. Please assume good faith & try to discuss a merge through the usual venues for that.  Why list an article for deletion if you don't believe it should actually be deleted? --Karnesky (talk) 06:32, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Timotheus Canens (talk) 01:29, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Speedy, strong and obvious keep. This is widely used, widely discussed, and well-known software.  It's hard to imagine any shred of good faith in nominating something so obviously notable just because it is FOSS.  LotLE × talk  18:13, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This editor is voting on all FOSS AfDs with identical reasons. Pcap ping  18:16, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If Lulu's comments on Articles for deletion/UC4, Articles for deletion/FormatFactory, and Articles for deletion/Redis (dbms) are 'identical reasons' (and remember, you said all), then your nominations are just as identical and as you yourself insinuate, thus mendacious. --Gwern  (contribs) 19:56 10 January 2010 (GMT)
 * UC4 is not FOSS, but it's WP:ARTSPAM written from press releases, by a well-known spammer. It just goes to show how much analysis goes into Lulu's votes. Can you find a single delete vote in his as of 20:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC) ]? All his software AfD voting started after the WP:Software notability RfC, which I was the first to oppose, by the way. Pcap  ping  20:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And if you want identical reasons on unsourced FOSS (of course worded differently), look at Articles_for_deletion/HOCR_(software), Articles_for_deletion/GNU_Typist, Articles_for_deletion/Model-Builder, or Articles for deletion/ProjectPier (3rd nomination). Surely he voted keep also on some articles where I found sources, e.g. Articles for deletion/FormatFactory or Articles for deletion/Redis (dbms), but that's not the point here. Pcap ping  20:24, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Per notability. 149.77.44.165 (talk) 23:35, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Pcap has not given any clear indication of what he might consider notability for Ratpoison. Is being comparable in popularity even now, and more popular for years, than xmonad or dwm enough? Are 5 books in Google books favorably mentioning it as a lightweight WM suitable for use in things like Knoppix enough? (How much is 'significant'? Is a short article with version, URL, description - basically ours - enough?) Are 3 or 4 papers in Google Scholar mentioning or using it enough? Is an O'Reilly article using Ratpoison enough, or IBM.com article with an entire section on the Ratpoison/Ion philosophy, or a FreshMeat article, or a LinuxPlanet article just on Ratpoison, or Daniel Webb's article? Do mentions and sections on OSNews count? You're fond of the linux.com animadversion of stumpwm; are you also fond of "A command-line interface for X"? Linux Gazette covers & mentions Ratpoison several times; as apparently so do http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1119461 & http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1519536.1519662 & http://dev.gentoo.gr.jp/~hiyuh/misc/PDFs/wmii_ja.pdf & http://artengine.ca/~catalogue-pd/12-Mansoux-Lee.pdf Are the many hits on FreeSoftware Daily, formerly part of Free Software Magazine, valid? What am I to make of slides for what seems to be a lecture on X, and WMs such as  Ratpoison, like http://www.salug.it/~fabioviola/pdf/lez1-xorg.pdf ?
 * I can assemble links until I'm blue in the face, but without any clear indication of what makes notability for software - you can't interview it, in many cases you can't write a book about it, etc. - all I'm doing is giving Pcap a chance to move goalposts and get some vocal exercise saying 'no', 'nope', 'not enough', 'insufficiently in-depth', 'yes, other articles link to that site, but I have higher standards' and so on. --Gwern (contribs) 16:43 12 January 2010 (GMT)


 * Please do not misrepresent the sources. None of those books recommend ratpoison as you claim. E.g. the knoppix book says:

Look at the list of cheat codes to see a number of other window managers, including kde, icewm, twm, and fluxbox if you are using the CD, plus gnome, larswm, openbox, ratpoison, wmkaker, xfce, and xfce4 if you are using the DVD.
 * This is the only mention of ratpoison in that book, so clearly it's not recommended or anything for use with knoppix. I will address the rest of your refs shotly. The basic question here is: how much coverage like that amounts to notability for our purposes. Pcap ping  18:30, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The idea that 500 people having installed, but are not necessarily using ratpoison confers notability is funny to say the least. I install plenty of stuff I don't use on my linux boxes. Pcap  ping  18:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The O'Reilly article is about running applications in Firefox. There's some incidental coverage of ratpoison a lightweight wm:

Figure 2 shows Firefox running without a window manager. The tabs work as expected, and even dialog boxes are largely usable. For now, a minimalist window manager (blackbox or ratpoison, for example) would improve some functionality, such as the dialog boxes. The next step is to integrate native applications with the browser. Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is the most mature option. Figure 3 shows a default Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) desktop, running inside Firefox using the TightVNC Java applet. This is a common approach for remote system access, but here everything is on the local machine. Firefox is running without a window manager, like in Figure 2. Note that Sun's Java is not yet fully open, but Sun is committed to FOSS licensing. Of course, a Firefox tab is ideally suited to focus on just one application. Figure 4 shows OpenOffice, running with the ratpoison window manager. The VNC-based integration with Firefox is nearly identical to that in Figure 3. If Firefox included some window manager features, it could control applications directly.


 * Please note that newsvac section of linux.com is user contributed and that Daniel Webb is a "a process control engineer at a gulf coast chemical plant" publishing on his persnal site. FreeSoftware Daily is a blog aggregator. The Italian pressentation has just a screenshot and a one sentence description; it's from salug.it, a Unix user group. I did not find anything useful in Linux Gazette on this. Pointing to searches that turn out chat transcripts and what not is generally hand-waving. Also, please do not point to random articles you did not read. The 1st ACM portal link you gave is actully this LJ article: another mention in a list. Pcap  ping  19:36, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Jeff Covey is the guy running Freshmeat, so the coverage there is WP:SELFPUB basically. But, the coverage is non-trivial and can be used as a secondary ref. The devworks article uses "Ion and ratpoison" as generic for tiling window manager, but does spend one paragraph on the design philosophy of ratpoison. These and the coverage in linuxplanet vacation story are enough for WP:GNG in my view. Withdrawing nom. Don't put this to heart, I'm not doing this annoy anybody. You did find some good sources, but apparently have trouble distinguishing between passing mentions, blogs, and something that can be used as reference for an article. Pcap ping  19:36, 12 January 2010 (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.