Shen up for Wikipedia deletion

[deech]

Qi has already been deleted by consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Qi_(programming_language)_(3rd_nomination) and Shen is due to be deleted soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Shen_(programming_language).

I added a Strong Keep. Hopefully people on this list will voice their opinions.

-deech

[Mark Tarver]

Qi has already been deleted by consensus

It seems that Wikipedia editors are intent on doing to Wikipedia what was done to the library at Alexandria.   Well, Qi is of historical interest.  

I think a few points should be made to msnicki.  She writes

1. Here's the problem I have with the argument that the work represents "an important step in language development". No one's argued anyone's using Qi or Shen and the author, Mark Tarver, is an academic  ...

This is flawed precisely because her premise - that I am an academic - is false.  A little research would have shown that I am not an academic, having left academia 12 years ago.  Since we have a news group of 467 people,  there are people using Shen, whether for pleasure or serious purpose.  

2. Wikipedia contains full articles on the Brainfuck and Malbolge languages which have far less following and purpose than Shen.  If Shen goes all these articles have to go too.

Regarding the license; this is a matter of factual accuracy, not notability.   Shen is under open source 3-clause BSD.  The injunction against ripping off Shen's BSD license and placing one's own license on top applies to all 3-clause BSD licenses including those used by Shenturians like Bruno and Greg.   Only if the author modifies the license by explicitly allowing people to do that is it legitimate to rewrite a license.    Harold's claim that the Shen license is modified is the exact reverse of the truth.

hga in the Wikipedia threads is Harold btw who is trying to stir it on Wikipedia.   His original objection to my license comments was that they would put people off!  In view of his subsequent public behaviour in trying to drag us down, one can see how insincere he is. I can only suppose he had some more predatory interest that relied on playing with copyright law.  Whatever good intention he had, if he had any, has long since been lost.  What a sad excuse for a person.

Mark

[Mark Tarver]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Shen_(programming_language)

Harold's little gem.

I think I know why, besides the licensing, Qi and Shen have been entirely uninfluential, thereby failing to achieve Wikipedia notability: there's little that's qualitatively unique about them except for implementation details. They are explicitly intended to be modern functional languages, adding a number of features where Lisp hasn't kept up in any base version of the language. And Shen's KL is akin to the SECD machine. 

There is little one can say about that can better Goebel's statement about lying and the big lie.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goebbelslie.html

The bit about KL being akin to the SECD machine is just woeful.  

Mark

[Raoul Duke]

yeah, as much as i do use and even sometimes donate $ to wikipedia, it
is well known that the entire system is broken if not actually
corrupt.

personally i don't think it is worth the effort to fight any kind of
uphill battle there; it all seems to effed up.

better to maintain one's own pages and keep them in good shape i dare
say. perhaps at least having a link off of a "functional programming
language" page over to Shen would be worth trying to keep and might be
easier to not have targeted by freakish zelots.

[Mark Tarver]

You'll always get freakish zealots, and Shen has had its share, as well as opportunists.  I think you just have to take the same attitude to them as you do to bacteria wrt your body.  You don't obsess about them, nor do you ignore them if they try to start an infection.  You just deal with them as necessary and get on with the fun things.    Often they will self-destruct or overplay their hand - generally people show themselves for what they are, however hard they pretend to be otherwise.

Mark

[Bruno Deferrari]

I don't know if it is going to be useful, but I just added to that
discussion a list of 8 links to blog articles about Shen written by
people who are not Mark.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Shen" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to qilang+un...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to qil...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/qilang.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--
BD

[Bruno Deferrari]

Ok Msnicki just said that blog posts don't count.

"No, sorry, they do not. Those all appear to be WP:Self-published
sources. Anybody can claim to be an expert and publish anything on his
own. This is why we ask for WP:Reliable sources, defined as those with
reputations for fact-checking and editorial control, and do not accept
blogs, YouTube videos and so on. But any reliable source will do. It
could be a hobbyist magazine as long it's reliable and you can somehow
get your material published there. It doesn't have to be
Communications of the ACM."

--
BD

[Mark Tarver]

Really, and I think this is my last remark on this,  the only issues which Wikipedia should be concerned with are

1.  Is the subject of the article of interest to a sufficiently large number of people?

2.  Are the facts *in the article* sufficiently supported by the citations?

The answer to 1. is 'yes'.  If the article is restricted to the bare facts then the answer to 2. is 'yes'.

e.g.  Shen is a functional programming language introduced in 2011.  It has been the subject of several blogs <cite> and transitioned to BSD in 2015 <cite>.  Presentations on Shen were given by <cite> and <cite>.

THE END

The issue of whether Shen is a step forward in language design etc etc. is not one that should be debated in Wikipedia.  Historical judgement settles these things. It is not incumbent on Shenturians to prove this claim because it is not made in the article.  

I also note that the article on Arc is more open to attack than Shen having the last stable release in 2009; however oddly no movement to delete it is afoot.  I wonder why ;)?

Mark 

>> email to qilang+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Mark Tarver]

I also note that the article on Arc is more open to attack than Shen having the last stable release in 2009; however oddly no movement to delete it is afoot.  I wonder why ;)?

Well that's fixed that one; Willi told me Arc is up for deletion too.    

Mark