Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trek73 (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   keep. Some of the arguments presented during this AfD are confusing to say the least, but regardless, it appears that there is no consensus for deletion. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 00:11, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Trek73
AfDs for this article: 
 * – (View AfD) (View log)

As per article talk page, there seems to be a lack of notability to support this article. The references given after the last AfD are pretty lacking, they simply describe the game as having been played in a university and by two people in particular. I checked (as per the article talk page) on Google, Googlebooks and Googlenews and could find nothing else other than personal websites on the game. Perhaps my Google-fu is weak, but I would like it noted that I had searched and am not using this Afd for general article cleanup. Alastairward (talk) 21:28, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * More comment later, but it might be worth checking out the sources claimed here. The sixth paragraph notes some places where the game was published in the 1970s. Protonk (talk) 21:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That paragraph is discussing descendants of Mike Mayfield's Star Trek game (covered in depth at Star Trek (text game)), not Trek73 which is an unrelated game.--Chris Johnson (talk) 01:32, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah. My mistake. Protonk (talk) 06:52, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No mistake, the article clearly talks about the Trek'73 under discussion here, and links to a port of it. Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:38, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Protonk was hoping to use the SCCS INTERFACE and Peoples Computer Company journal publications as sources for this article. I was pointing out that those were about a different game.  The article discusses Trek73 later on but doesn't point to any publications about it. --Chris Johnson (talk) 13:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Too bad that article is just floating on someone's web site. It could qualify as coverage for both versions of the game if it was a reliable source. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 00:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep: Article in question is NOTE through Hackers, Steve Levy's widely read book which has its own article here. Link provided in the article, and mentioned in on the talk page. Passing mentioned, but several independent websites and personal histories round it out, including http://www.decodesystems.com/hp2000/]   etc. These demonstrate that it's not just "two people in particular", and the presence of many ports, some of them modern, demonstrate continued interest. Maury Markowitz (talk) 23:40, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * All I was looking for were some reliable, third party sources, that provide more than trivial mention of the source material. There are a lot of fan sites certainly, I found those through the Google search that I performed already. Alastairward (talk) 08:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Pretty much the entire history of early computing is not available via Internet research. Journals and magazines of the 1970s and 1980s have not been fully indexed and made available on line though Google Books says Trek73 has a mention in one of the issues of Byte magazine from 1976.
 * The current on-line evidence of notability for Trek73, and games such as Adventure, is that there's continued fan interest 35 years later. One surprise is no one has written a recent RS article about how some of early computing devices and applications continue to attract interest today. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 01:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Marc, regarding your point about internet research, two out of four "references" already given in the article are from books. The information seems to be out there about such games, in this case it just seems that there isn't anything significant about it to merit a non-trivial article in a reliable source. Don't you think that there might be something to your second paragraph, that there doesn't seem to be a recent RS article given the supposed continued interest? Alastairward (talk) 09:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep: An important piece of computing history notable per above and per the article. Previous AfD found no consensus for delete but led to a botched merge from which the article was rescued (note that Trek73 is a text Star Trek game but is not related to the Star Trek (text game)) --Kkmurray (talk) 01:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Again, wouldn't this notability be reflected in more than a trivial mention? Alastairward (talk) 08:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I don’t think that the consensus view is that the references are trivial.--Kkmurray (talk) 13:35, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So I've been told, but nobody has been kind enough to elaborate. As I said before, all that seems to be sure from the references, is that the game was worked upon by certain programmers and was popular in an American university. Surely if there's something more to be taken from them, you or the others building this consensus can simply state it? Why else would this have reached AfD? Alastairward (talk) 15:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep I know that "I remember playing this" is not an argument for keep, but it was one of the early computer games, with results printed on teletype, and popular at college computer labs.  Citation to verifiable sources is enough to confirm notability. Mandsford (talk) 14:55, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Other than Maury Markowitz's second link above, I can see no sources which are both reliable (by our standards; people's recollections on their personal websites are not really sufficient) and non-trivial. It is important to reiterate that merely being played by a number of people in the early days of computing is not sufficient for us; we must rely predominantly on non-trivial secondary sources upon which to base the article, and there's only one of them right now. I'm willing to accept that such sources may well exist, but if those strongly arguing for a keep are going to break the cycle of this getting repeatedly AFDed then they have to be located and added to the article. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:52, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So then you agree that link in question passes muster? So then it's a keep? Excellent! Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:43, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Would you care to elaborate on how it establishes notability (that's all I've been asking all along)? Alastairward (talk) 22:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Repectfully, I rather think you've missed the point of my comment. While I may be convinced that the article has potentially to be reliably sourced on this occasion, that there is one single solitary RS which gives the subject non-trivial coverage right now is problematic. That needs to be addressed to break this cycle. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I meant that question for Maury. Alastairward (talk) 11:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My reply was directed at Maury. I agree with your sentiments. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions.  --  Fences  &amp;  Windows  20:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Game-related deletion discussions.  --  Fences  &amp;  Windows  20:44, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - I absolutely sucked at this game when I played it in the mid-70s using a teletype connected to the DG Nova at LHS. There, is that the reliable third party source or should I see if the teletype printouts are still at my mother's house? :-) Seriously - the game attracted a huge amount of attention. Look at this page for the number of ports. Each of those could be considered reliable independent coverage of the entire game and many are also fully referenced in that copies are available today. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 06:45, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No, they couldn't; ports are hardly independent sources. Once again, the issue here is that making out that such examples are evidence of adequate reliable sourcing may allow for the article to survive another AfD, but it will not remove the possibility of it being re-nominated in future. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * For the record, by my count, only two of the linked games have anything to do with Trek73 (though a few other ports are mentioned in the text). The rest are different Trek games.--Chris Johnson (talk) 11:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that finding evidence of independent/reliable/secondary coverage from the 1973 to late 1970s period will be tough. One thought is Electronics (magazine) which was the "computer magazine" of the era. FWIW, a rewrite of the game may qualify as WP:GNG coverage if the independent sources show the developers put a great deal of effort in faithful duplication of the algorithms or other aspects. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 00:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This is my main complaint when writing about early computer history. I call it "the internet black hole". Many topics that would be trivially easy to document today due to widespread internet presence and archiving went undocumented in the past because dead trees cost more money. And in the 70's it was considerably more expensive to publish than it is today, even in the same format. It's a bit sad that so much great history is locked up behind the paywalls of people like the IEEE and ACM and are unlikely to ever be set free. Maury Markowitz (talk) 01:32, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That era is hardly unique. People did not stop documenting their experiences on pieces of dead plants just because there were new media available. We have many articles on subjects contemporary to that period which do not rely on first-hand accounts from students of the period in question. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * To clarify the point about the number of ports from above, I can identify ten: Precursor $SPACE (Char, 1973), HP2000 BASIC TREK73 (Char, Perry, Lee, and Gee, 1973), LHS BASIC version (Perkins, 1974), C Port (Pare, 1984), C Port (Williams, 1984), Combined Pare/Williams C port (Okamoto, Yee, 1985), DOS Lattice C (Soussan, 1985), Turbo Pascal (Chu, 1985), C/Curses version (Chu, 1990), FreeBSD Port (Dillon, 1999). --Kkmurray (talk) 02:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Maury, this "internet black hole", is simply irrelevant. You have decided yourself that there is a great deal of history to this game, if only someone would produce a significant article on it in a reliable third party publication. That's just your own OR, if such a publication does not exist, even if you think it should, then that's that really. Notability has not been supplied, wishing hard that it should does nothing for this article. Alastairward (talk) 09:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Merge to Star Trek (text game). I simply don't see the sources needed for a standalone article.  I realize Star Trek (text game) is primarily focused on the family of games descending from Mayfield's game, but I don't see any reason it can't be broadened to cover similar but independently created early Star Trek games like Trek73.--Chris Johnson (talk) 11:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The games are utterly unrelated in every possible way except their name. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of video game related deletion discussions. Ost (talk) 16:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep per Maury Markowitz and others. Given the date and topic this was darn notable for the time but unlikely to get coverage in the pre-web era.   Hobit (talk) 17:25, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hobit, may I ask if you would clarify please? You seem to be essentially saying that it's notable, but we can't cite that notability. That's the crux of the reason for the AfD, if it's so "darn notable" where's the cite? Alastairward (talk) 21:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Great question. WP:N is a fine guidepost for what makes a subject notable--If there is significant coverage in RSes, it's notable and otherwise not.  But it is a guideline, and not policy, for a reason.  Sometimes the guideline is wrong.  Here we have a topic that is important from a computer games history viewpoint but that isn't a topic covered very well by RSes.  So we be _darn_ sure we are meeting WP:V and write the best article we can because we believe the topic is notable in the dictionary definition meaning "worthy of note" even if it doesn't meet the goalpost set by WP:N.  Hobit (talk) 17:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've had an article deleted that I believed was notable and had similar sources to back it up. I've had articles deleted or merged that other users have been adamant were notable. None of which matter since nobody could provide sources to prove they really were notable. Nobody has done so for this article, all we have in essence is the word of the editors here. Assuming good faith is all well and good, but we can't include things on someone's promise alone. You might very well point out that this isn't a paper encyclopaedia, why not have an article on everything? Well, that would pretty much open the flood gates to so many articles that we couldn't spend the time to verify what we're adding. To counter what you said, I say that the twin goals of notable articles backed up by verified sources are worth maintaining and this article just doesn't cut it. All we can say from the sources for sure is that it was a university project and really that's it. Alastairward (talk) 18:24, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we can verify that it was felt to be an important project years ago. And yes, we trust editor's opinions.  That's why we have discussions.  Hobit (talk) 19:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That's the sticking point, we can't verify anything other than the opinion of fans online and while it's good to know other editors are being honest, that's not the bar for the inclusion of material in Wikipedia. We have discussions not just to provide opinions, but to provide opinions on the material being added and how it can be verified and proved to be notable. Alastairward (talk) 20:04, 25 September 2009 (UTC)


 * KeepEven I tried to play this game. I'd apologize for not documenting this at the time in a reliable-source fashion; I had no notion of Wikipedia's desires then. htom (talk) 17:35, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's time to add Category:Wikipedians who have played Trek73? :-) --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 05:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * More OR? Simply remembering the game does not constitute a reliable source nor does it supply notability. Alastairward (talk) 07:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There are two separate questions here. A) Does this meet WP:N and B) does this meet WP:V. I think we have near consensus that this doesn't meet WP:N but should be kept anyways (WP:IAR if you want a rule for that, but WP:N is a guideline and not policy for a reason).  Are you arguing past that and saying we can't verify the existence of the game or anywhere near enough stuff to be able to make a decent stub?  Hobit (talk) 17:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Very true. WP:NOTABILITY can be trumped if editors explain themselves well enough. A mitigating factor is the age of this game - and the editors! - which makes it harder to find reliable sources, though contemporary computer magazines will almost certainly have covered it. The game is obviously popular, which can sometimes act as a guide in lieu of significant coverage in reliable sources, though it's not a precedent I want to see set often. Fences  &amp;  Windows  18:01, 28 September 2009 (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.