Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Star (Unix)


 * 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   merge to Tar (file format). Spartaz Humbug! 04:01, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Star (Unix)

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Procedural nomination for IP user. Their rationale: --Cyber cobra (talk) 09:31, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

The reasons are actually given on the main page:
 * Notabiliy uncertain
 * No third party references or sources
 * COI - article is essentially written by the Star author to promote his own software

My main concern is that for the typical Wikipedia user, this is just another tar implementation, and it clearly is sufficient to have star in the article Tar (file format), which also covers GNU tar and BSD tar, both of which are much more common than Star. GNU tar actually is a redirect to the Tar file format. Star should be the same, it is just another implementation for handling tar format files; all notability is drawn from being a tar archiver.

Please understand that this is not about "deleting star", but actually I believe the appropriate place is the main "tar" article, and since star is already there, there actually is not much merging required!

The appropriate place for discussion apparently is Articles for deletion/Star (Unix) but I cannot create that page, being unregistered. --87.174.113.246 (talk) 07:18, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions.  — Cyber cobra  (talk) 09:28, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Suggest speedy close. It seems that what the nominator wants is a redirect or a merger. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:07, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Redirect to tar (file format). unsoureced, non-notable tar implementation. if any of the info can be sourced, it can be merged later. -Atmoz (talk) 16:56, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep Poor nomination by 87.174.113.246. This utility has been mainstream for decades. The O'Reilly book Unix Backup & Recovery pages 142-143 mentions star being the fastest known implementation of tar. This utility has been around for a very long time and has plenty of coverage. Practically any seasoned Unix admin has used this program at one time or another. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't doubt that, but I doubt that we need separate articles on the various tar implementations. GNU tar and BSD tar are probably more common (defaults on Linux and OSX?), and do not need separate articles either (and don't have one). What is wrong with having star part of the tar file format article just as the other tar implementations? --188.104.104.61 (talk) 07:23, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The star utility actually predates GNU tar and was included with many Unix operating systems before GNU tar even existed. It does not matter if GNU tar is more commonly included with Linux, OS X, or any other operating system. We don't delete articles about notable subjects due to the non-existence of other articles, because they are unfamiliar, or just because you don't like them. I'm not going to fall for your "civil" POV-pushing. --Tothwolf (talk) 11:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Redirect to tar. All the article says is that it is an implementation to produce "tar" files (and cpio+pax, but that is also very common for tar implementations). I don't have the impression that there is much more to say than "this is one of three popular tar implementations". As for speed, the key limitation of tar usually is disk IO, and I doubt that it does that much less disk IO than the others... CPU load of tar should be neglectable, and for compression it probably uses the same zlib as the others. --87.174.125.124 (talk) 08:49, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment 87.174.* made arguments claiming there were no sources and the utility wasn't notable, neither of which turned out to be true. In reviewing the article's edit history, the COI claims are pretty much non-existent. Having an interest or connection with something does not necessarily mean there is a conflict of interest. The conflict of interest guideline also makes this clear. A conflict of interest would occur if the material was non-neutral, made claims which were not true, etc. The facts in the article are supported by reliable sources and the utility is widely known, used and quite notable. The only thing I see the COI claim being used for is a personal attack against Jörg Schilling. In further reviewing the article's edit history and the sudden activity here, there appears to be ongoing sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry from a group if German IP addresses: 188.104.122.1, 188.104.104.135, 87.174.113.246, 87.174.125.124, at least one of which appears to be connected with someone highly involved with WinRAR (I won't elaborate further here but it is pretty easy to figure out). This is a serious violation of our neutral point of view policy. I can also see that the same thing has been occurring on the German Wikipedia  --Tothwolf (talk) 11:35, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You are a bit on the paranoid side here... I don't even have Windows, and I have no relationship to WinRAR whatsoever. As a linux user, I do however frequently use "tar" and I was wondering if maybe "star" is better and found the article to be pretty much worthless. "star" qualified as "one particular pokemon" for me, so in the line of the Poképrosal I propose to have all Pokemons (tars) mentioned in a single appropriate article: tar (file format). After all, Wikipedia is WP:NOT a complete software directory. We can treat the whole tar family in a single article. We could even go as far as merging pax (Unix) there (albeit I do think there is enough to write about pax to keep it a separate article). --93.104.75.74 (talk) 13:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Redirect to tar (file format). I am going to claim a wee bit of authoritative knowledge. As a unix administrator, star is useful when you have very deep directory structures. This is somewhat specialized information, and I am going to claim WP:EVERYTHING and say the features star has beyond the basic tar utility do not justify it having an encyclopedia entry of its own. Cheers, Liberal Classic (talk) 00:20, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
 * For the Tar (file format) article, I wonder whether a sensible listing of important implementations in tabular form might be more useful than the current bullet points in Tar_(file_format), giving an overview which of these extensions are supported. I don't care much that star allegedly was the first and GNU tar followed on; there are some useful extensions and they are compatible among popular implementations. On many systems, one has the choice between multiple tar implentations. Fedora for example will have GNU tar as default, but it also has a star package, probably bsdtar too. OSX has bsdtar as default. My only concern is that the table will essentially be an "all implementations support all these extensions"? Plus, we'll frequently see the addition of general archivers that also have partial tar support from Comparison_of_file_archivers... Anyway, my key reasoning is that as end user of a modern Unix system, I usually have at least the choice between GNU tar, BSD tar, star and OpenBSD pax. Some of these might already be installed (isn't pax part of the Linux Standards Base?), the others will be rather easy to install, either as package or from source (I figure neither of these has major dependencies and should thus just compile). On a Solaris system, there might also be a pre-star UNIX tar and Sun pax, I guess. The article could be more helpful here beyond the "star invented this in 2001, GNU tar sucks because it only supports this since 2004" banter that was introduced in multiple locations. So when GNU tar is already installed, why/when should I consider star - I don't live in 2001. And on the other end, which functionality should I avoid so I don't get incompatibility when extracting the archive on other platforms. The "star" article is not at all helpful on this either, that's why I proposed to merge it! Also note that star is essentially an orphan article. It is rightfully linked from Jörg Schilling, Star disambiguation, the tar file format (in a "history" way) and the redhat package manager (a link that in my opinion is already a bit spammy). And I cannot think of many extra links where one wouldn't have to write "tar or star or GNUtar or BSDtar or pax" --87.174.110.110 (talk) 12:04, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I could not find any sources that back the "rpm has star support" claim. It's a bit fishy -- I'd expect rpm to prefer GNU tar, or at least allow it alternatively. I can imagine that rpm has ustar format support, and the "u" got lost. I added a missing reference tag. The current fedora rpm documentation says the RPM archive contains a "cpio" archive; no mention of tar there. Of course you could use star to uncompress cpio though ... --87.174.110.110 (talk) 21:44, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Making a table there sounds like a good idea. Minor various in implementation (e.g. Solaris tar) do not justify separate articles. FuFoFuEd (talk) 06:29, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I spend hours digging through RPM revision logs and rpm man pages. No mentioning of tar outside of build options or star anywhere. I therefore removed that unsourced reference to Star from the RPM Package Manager article, making the star article essentially an orphan. Feel free to find a reference for this star support, but I clearly failed here. --87.174.87.151 (talk) 07:12, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge to Tar (file format). There are multiple books mentioning star briefly either to say it has ACL support or is fast, but the latter are generally ancient books, so the information is not that relevant today. Because there's not much else that can be said about it, a separate article is unjustified due to lack of significant independent coverage. FuFoFuEd (talk) 06:15, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * star supports POSIX file extentions and very long path names, but I would agree these features alone do not make star notable. The entry for Tar (file format) could contain a short section listing different implementations with the notable features of each. Liberal Classic (talk) 15:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)


 * For comparison, Gnu tar, which is far more notable, redirects to Tar (file format). FuFoFuEd (talk) 06:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge to Tar (file format). Does not appear to be independently notable. Can be adequately covered along with other implementations of the format. --Cyber cobra (talk) 09:13, 1 June 2011 (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.