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Platform column

The platform column is pretty useless at the moment. It just lists the processor architecture not the actual platform. "Platform" means a combination of processor architecture, underlying OS, and vendor. Things like Android, Solaris, AmigaOS, Ubuntu etc. need to be added.

If you listed *that* information, the web page might be useful to me. I came here to find an IRC client for a foreign platform that I didn't know anything about (something called Windows). Instead I ended up downloading Opera as I know that it has a built-in IRC client. 87.194.208.119 (talk) 10:36, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

he? solaris is in, amigaos also, android is a Linux, ubuntu also: so why not looking in these columns? these table/comparison is more cluttered that every other comparison i saw in wikipedia! mabdul 23:12, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Somebody please consider removing the platform column: A quick search on Debian's Package site will reveal most clients are for all the supported Platforms. The chart about OS support is much more useful in this case. --99.41.104.240 Thu Jan 20 00:09:13 UTC 2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.41.104.240 (talk) 00:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Orion (IRC client)

Notability not established, and inappropriately redirected to this article. I've found no reliable, independent, notable sources, discussing this IRC client in news, magazines, journals, or books. The blue link to ] is a redirect to this very article, which cites no sources about this client. The WP:GNG General Notability Guideline, yes, applies to articles, but the Orion IRC Client lacks sufficient WP:RS to possess its own article. For comparison, see the rather well-sourced Chatzilla article which cites, yes, the developer and Mozilla sites, but also includes magazine articles, reviews, and books. Please help by locating and listing WP:RS which can be used to create an article for Orion, and any other non-article-yet-possibly-notable clients. IMHO, "notable enough for this list" should mean "has its own article in which notability is established." Otherwise, this comparison's entries will always be vulnerable to summary deletion, one by one, by deletionists, or even quite reasonable "no source? delete" editors. --Lexein (talk) 18:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

http://tellini.info/software/orion/ I can't figure out how to add that correctly to references. Also, can you please fix the formatting/links on the first table's Orion entry? I was trying to make the tables consistent.

71.214.52.97 (talk) 14:23, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Bah nevermind - just read the *sshattery above. I guess they'll do a bulk fix, anyways when the article is repaired. Wow, mass deletes of sourced materials FTL!71.214.52.97 (talk) 14:36, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. However, Tellini is the author, a primary source not a reliable (nonblog, nonforum, nonwiki) independent (completely unrelated to Tellini), notable (established, published) 3rd-party source. The Orion client has not been reviewed or even mentioned in any magazines or related blog, journals or related blog, newsletters, or books. One such review will be good, two would be better; then I'd call it sourced. At the moment, it should be removed from all this article's tables, IMHO. All new software suffers from this sourcing and notability battle. At the moment, I'm not bothered that Orion doesn't have an article - it's definitely not WP:GNG generally notable enough for that - I'm just looking for any kind of WP:RS. I hope you understand that I have the same problem with any entry in this list which lacks an article and any WP:RS. --Lexein (talk) 02:22, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Good grief... Why is this argument still turning up here again? This stuff has been discussed to death above. The notability guideline does not limit what can or cannot be written about in an article. The WP:NNC section of the notability guideline is quite explicit on this and trying to limit article content based with the WP:GNG was not a view supported by one of the recent RFCs.

As long as we have verifiability there is nothing preventing us from discussing a particular software program in relation to others. For basic features and functionality of a software program, a primary source is sufficient. As long as we don't attempt to draw our own conclusions from a primary source (e.g. program "A" is better than program "B" because...) there is nothing wrong with using a primary source to verify that program "X" supports feature "Y". See WP:SELFPUB and Misplaced Pages:Identifying reliable sources#Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves for more on this. A program's own documentation, website, source code, etc will also almost always be more authoritative in documenting a program's current features and functionality than a 3rd party book which covers a software program because software evolves much at a much faster rate than books can be published.

Keep in mind, however, that the verifiability policy does not state that every single fact needs an inline citation. It would be quite silly and even disruptive to the reading of an article to require an inline citation for every single fact contained within an article. Anything controversial, suspect, or otherwise likely to be challenged by the average reader should however have a citation.

"... and inappropriately redirected to this article"? The Alternatives to deletion section of the deletion policy states among other relevant things: "Articles that are short and unlikely to be expanded could be merged into larger articles or lists."

71.214.52.97, I think *sshattery is a good way to describe it. The good news I suppose is the original individual responsible for harassing me online for roughly 18 months (who took an interest in harming articles such as this and others where I had previously done significant amounts of editing) is now indef blocked here on Misplaced Pages (although most likely back again editing under a new account). The two accounts which were "helping" him (including repeatedly mass-nominating this and many other articles which I had contributed to for deletion, mass-MFDing draft articles in my userspace, etc) were finally sanctioned after yet another lengthy ANI discussion and ArbCom amendment, after which both accounts were apparently "abandoned".

There are a number of highly skilled editors who work on comparison articles within WP:COMP's scope, so if I don't get to this one soon enough, eventually another editor will likely begin working on it. Comparison articles can be quite difficult to work on because of the complex markup and the sheer volume of information which has to be verified. I would estimate that cleaning the mess up here will likely take at least 20-30 hours of work, based on past experience. --Tothwolf (talk) 10:51, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

For this discussion to stop coming up repeatedly, just state the inclusion criteria somewhere like the top of the article and/or in hidden comments as recommended in, say WP:LIST#Lead section or paragraph or similar. This article certainly looked to me like most of the entries have a) an article and/or b) reliable secondary sources, for example, Chatzilla. Orion has neither. Your fight's not with me, and I'm not a deletionist, nor a campaigner against lists, comparisons, or you. If you reread what I wrote carefully, Orion doesn't have an article because it doesn't have RS. I can see GNG per se being tough for software to meet, but getting one or two secondary RS just isn't that high of a burden to meet. All I wanted was one or two RS mentioning Orion, to go forward with its inclusion here. Without RS, it really shouldn't, since nearly every other item in this comparison has RS. (Also note that I didn't delete it, just commented it out, because I respect the work involved in adding entries). Was I wrong to infer inclusion criteria based on extant entries? --Lexein (talk) 14:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Example proposed inclusion criteria for this comparison:

1. Inclusion: One notable independent secondary reliable source: a review, or a two-sentence mention. Examples: Wired or Wired blog, Linux Journal, New York Times or NYT blog, or "industry" blogs which have been republished in or cited in notable publications. If the software author(s) is/are notable (established previously in sources like (1), example: JWZ), then the software has inherited notability.
2. Features/details: The primary source (software author's website) is good enough for the detailed software features. Detailed features do not require secondary RS for purpose of listing here. (In my opinion, writing about the detailed features does require secondary RS, because Misplaced Pages's "voice" is the voice of the sources not the editors.)

At the moment, criteria #1 is a barrier to Orion, but that barrier lifts as soon as it's noticed and written about. Misplaced Pages has always been about what secondary sources, say about the article subject.

--Lexein (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:SELFPUB a self-published primary source can be a reliable source for non-controversial facts about the subject itself. As I mentioned above, a primary source can be used to show that "program X" supports "feature Y", and this is an acceptable use of a primary source here on Misplaced Pages. It is very common to cite a program's own site and documentation for verification of the release date/version and for features/functionality of the software itself. As I mentioned above, we can't use primary sources for other purposes such as "Program A is better than Program B because it supports feature X" because that would fall afoul of WP:NOR.

The notability argument for inclusion of content however has no place within a comparison article. Per WP:NNC we do not limit article content based on the notability guideline. The notability guideline covers whether or not a topic meets the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. What came out of our last RFC on notability and lists also extends this to the subject of a list, e.g. the subject (but not the title) of "University of X alumni who Y" would itself need to be considered notable as a group in order to have a "List of University of X alumni who Y" standalone list. As I've previously stated above, this seems to make perfect sense when it comes to such lists. What came out of the RFC still does not cover embedded lists, nor does it cover other forms of lists or articles.

Now, with this specific article, my argument is not that we should include every single IRC client ever written... While there are a finite number of "IRC clients" out there, I don't feel that we should include every pet project someone has ever written in Visual Basic (I often found that many of these were written in Visual Basic, however there have been popular software programs written in Visual Basic in the past too). We should however mention the features and functionality of popular or better known clients (as known by users of IRC) even when a client does not have a standalone article, regardless of whether or not it meets the requirements of the notability guideline for the purposes of a standalone article. E.g. XiRCON (see the AfD for that one and take particular note of who the nom was).

It isn't just here that this "discussion" keeps coming up. I've see these same notability arguments brought up on many comparison article talk pages and even when challenged and eventually struck down by others, they end up popping up again elsewhere. If we were to attempt to artificially limit comparison articles such as this solely to Misplaced Pages-notable items, we end up presenting a very skewed view of the overall subject. Comparison articles, especially software comparisons are among some of our most popular articles here on Misplaced Pages. See WP:COMP/PP for many such examples. While Misplaced Pages shouldn't be used for promotion of "software X", if a particular software program is or has previously been well known and/or popular with users of that genre of software, then we should still include it in such comparison articles.

The main issue I see looking at the larger view is that we currently do not have a Manual of Style page which covers the various forms of comparison articles. This leads to many people not having a fundamental understanding of how and why they are structured the way they are, why they include what they include, etc. Editors who work on these forms of articles tend to learn this stuff hands-on, but at some point we still really need to write a MoS page which covers these forms of articles. --Tothwolf (talk) 10:38, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I had to WP:DISENGAGE for a while before responding to this.

1. Are you saying that Orion should be included in this comparison, even though nobody anywhere has written about it? No independent sources needed? That any joker in a garage can write whatever they want on their publicity brochure, website, blog, forum, and wiki, and you'd include it in this article, comparing its unverified (and UNVERIFIABLE) claims against other clients for which RS have established verifiability? That's a remarkably low threshold of inclusion, with which I disagree, and I'm an inclusionist. Keep in mind, there's not one shred of independent reliable evidence which supports the existence of Orion as an IRC client. By what Misplaced Pages policy/guideline/essay do you really think Orion's inclusion should stand? Ignore all rules - is this IRC client worth invoking that?
2. Linking Orion (blue link) elevates its apparent stature to "as mentioned on Misplaced Pages", purporting to link to an article with reliable, independent sources supporting Orion. Linking Orion to this very article is disingenuous, because this article cites no such sources about Orion. This constitutes a use of WP as PROMO, and should not be encouraged at all.
3. Notability is important as a concept, even though we're not talking about "article level" notability. We can't just make stuff up, or quote primary sources with zero independent verification. Comparison article or not, verifiability, WP:TRUTH, and WP:RS.
4. In case anyone wonders, I have nothing against Orion or its author. It has become the lightning rod, unfortunately, in this discussion, because it completely lacks any support in independent reliable sources, and therefore fails WP:RS, a bedrock policy at WP.
5. And again, to put a button on it, if you don't want discussions such as this to keep recurring, state the actual inclusion criteria concisely, at least at the top of the Talk page. Don't bother yelling at or insulting me, due to your failure to clearly state whatever consensus your prior discussions have reached. --Lexein (talk) 16:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Addendum - Tothwolf, you state you only want to include popular IRC clients. Is there any RS way to measure popularity in terms of downloads or usage? Yes, Google shows there are over 17,000 "hits", but it's only mentioned as an echo of Tellini's own description of the software (using the word "comfortable"). I don't recommend relying on Softonic's download popularity rating (3rd of 19 IRC clients at 1000+ downloads), with Yahoo India's IM client is #1 at 143,000. BTW ChatZilla is at over 5,000,000+ downloads. Are there any usage-based server statistics reported in WP:RS which will indicate how many people are using which client? If not, how can we, as Misplaced Pages editors, decide download or usage popularity at all? We can't. We have to rely on WP:RS, because we can't just make stuff up. I say, in the absence of popularity reports in WP:RS, we have to abandon the notion of popularity in toto, and rely only on WP:RS verification of the existence, and hence, relative notability (not GNG article-grade notability), of the client.

Reminders: I didn't delete Orion, just commented it out until it has one WP:RS, ffs. I do respect the work. (Nobody's attacking anybody here except for you and an anonymous IP calling me an asshat. I politely request that you strikethrough or delete your rant against "attackers" - it has no place in a discussion of this article's improvement. As soon as you do that, I'll do the same for this. As for XIRCON, the deletion discussion was damnably short, and its undeletion request was denied but did you, really, make an effort to find RS to justify the article? There are some decently citable sources about XIRCON - I found them in 3 seconds. If you felt that strongly about XIRCON, why did you request to delete its userfied version at User:Tothwolf/XIRCON? If you don't care enough to maintain it for improvement in your userspace (dooming its invested work forever), you can't claim to care enough to bring it up here as an example of an "attack" on you or this article. Anyways, I'm now mindful of your experience at the hands of other editors, so I'll try to be less abrasive. But dude, knock off the victim/attack paranoia - it's just not happening here.)

Anybody else? Opinion about requiring one cloth-eared reliable source for inclusion? --Lexein (talk) 08:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Lexein, you appear to be misinterpreting what 71.214.52.97 and myself were referring to as "asshattery", which were some of the "discussions" much further up on this talk page.

What I said above is Misplaced Pages-notability is not a valid metric for article content inclusion/exclusion. This is made clear in the notability guideline itself and I further explained why attempting to use Misplaced Pages's notability guideline to artificially limit article content ends up presenting a topic such as this to the reader in a biased "Misplaced Pages-notable" manner.

To further expand on what I said above, both primary and self-published sources can be used on Misplaced Pages and can be reliable; it depends on the source and how it is used. While blogs, email lists, etc are generally not considered "reliable" (especially for the purposes of a BLP article), per WP:SELFPUB and longstanding common practice within WP:COMP's scope, we can and do use primary and self-published sources in the manner I described above. Take for example the Linux kernel. Emails, usenet posts, and blog posts made by Linus Torvalds and other Linux kernel developers are considered reliable for the purposes of citing "The Linux kernel supports feature "X"" and "The next version of the Linux kernel will include support for "Y"". While we certainly can't use them to say "The Linux kernel is better than because ..." (since that would be considered original research), if a developer made such a statement on his blog, we could still include his statement as a direct quote.

As for Orion, the software program's own site for example is reliable for the purposes of showing that the client is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. The source code and included documentation (Changes.txt, Readme.txt, etc) would also be reliable for the purposes of showing that the software supports features "X", "Y", and "Z". While English sources are much preferable (see WP:RSUE), if we don't have an English source which states that open source software program "X" supports feature "Y", the source code of the program itself can be cited as it is a reliable self-published source and is acceptable for the purposes of verifiability when it comes to the software program's features and functionality.

As far as defining popular IRC clients, yes, there are metrics we can use, although two of the better online ones such as the "Top IRC clients" from irc.netsplit.de and another from Alexa are no longer available. This really isn't surprising either, given the slow decline in popularity of IRC with the introduction of some of the newer web-based social networking technologies.

Yes, the XiRCON AfD was very much flawed, but it is just one example of many which were part of a much larger pattern. The reason I CSD'd all drafts within my userspace is detailed in the AN/I report I made here. After I made this report, one if the individuals involved attempted to initiate an ArbCom amendment request in revenge (which Plaxico'd quite badly). Two of the three individuals involved abandoned their accounts when they were finally sanctioned and placed under edit restrictions. The third individual was later indef blocked for continuing to make personal attacks. For more background, see User talk:Tothwolf/Archive 4#On the subject of COI. These three individuals were the ones involved in the discussions above which 71.214.52.97 and I referred to.

Another example is Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/AmIRC. Here are two dead-tree sources for it:
Charalabidis, Alex (1999-12-15). "Odds and Ends: IRC for Other Platforms: Amiga". The Book of IRC: The Ultimate Guide to Internet Relay Chat (1st ed.). San Francisco, California: No Starch Press. p. 249. ISBN 1-886411-29-8. AmIRC is probably the most popular client for the Amiga. It supports all the basics, emphasizing well-developed standard features rather than modern toys, and provides a stable and secure chat environment.
Jeacle, Karl (1996). "Running the Best Software: Internet Relay Chat: AmIRC". First Steps Amiga Surfin'. Bedford, Bedfordshire: Bookmark Publishing. p. 76. ISBN 1-85550-007-8. AmIRC is the aforementioned competition to Grapevine. As with the other "Am" applications, it is the Amiga Technologies choice for inclusion in the A1200 Surfer pack. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

Another example is Grapevine, and while I can't see that we've ever had an article for it on Misplaced Pages (and it would seem to meet the requirements of the GNG for the purposes of a standalone article), coverage of this client certainly should be included in this article.
Charalabidis, Alex (1999-12-15). "Odds and Ends: IRC for Other Platforms: Amiga". The Book of IRC: The Ultimate Guide to Internet Relay Chat (1st ed.). San Francisco, California: No Starch Press. pp. 249–250. ISBN 1-886411-29-8.
Jeacle, Karl (1996). "Running the Best Software: Internet Relay Chat: Grapevine". First Steps Amiga Surfin'. Bedford, Bedfordshire: Bookmark Publishing. p. 75. ISBN 1-85550-007-8. Grapevine has been called "The best IRC client on any platform" by a number of experienced Amiga Internet users. it was one of the first major Internet applications available for the Amiga and it did such a good job of being an IRC client that until recently there was no competition whatsoever. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

I could cite dozens and dozens of these but I think you probably get the idea. Note that The Book of IRC like many books is not indexed (either full or in part) and text-searchable with Google, so a simple Google Books search is not going to turn it up as a source for the great many IRC-related subtopics it covers. (cf. FUTON bias, Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Cost, and Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals#Require or prefer free, online sources) --Tothwolf (talk) 10:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

About IRC clients which have independent RS, I of course welcome including them here. Old sources are fine. Dead tree sources are fine. Clients with zero independent WP:RS should wait. Including such clients in a survey or comparison article is solid Original research and/or WP:PROMO. Let me be clear: there's article-level notability (GNG) and sentence-level notability (RS); I've only been advocating sentence-level notability (I've never claimed that GNG applies within this article, and I can't understand why you claim I did. Carefully reread what I wrote). Solution: if some Random Tech Journal mentions Orion in a survey of clients, mentions one or two features, and comments on whether it's "comfortable" as claimed by the author, that would clear my ever-so-low entry hurdle. This comparison article can then certainly list the rest of the features. I'm fine with that. Finally, perhaps I wasn't clear, but not even bloggers or forum folk have reviewed Orion. Nobody. That's how unabashedly non-notable it is. I doubt that any of the other IRC clents listed here can make that claim. --Lexein (talk) 13:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Based on your reply it appears you at least understand most of the points I tried to make.

One important point which still doesn't seem to be translating is the threshold for inclusion of content in an article is verifiability, not notability (or sentence-level notability as you refer to it). A reliable source, be it self-published or independent third-party which allows for verification is what is required. Your earlier argument was that we couldn't even verify that Orion existed -- the link to the website and source code for the program certainly shows that it exists. It also shows that the program is a freely available open source software program made available under the Creative Commons license. One thing (among others) which makes Orion quite noteworthy within the larger IRC community is that it is only client of its kind which is made freely available under the Creative Commons license. This alone makes it worth including here for readers who are searching for a freely available open source software IRC client for the Microsoft Windows platform.

Given your sentence-level notability argument, would you argue that because mIRC's latest features and functionality have not been covered in a dead-tree (cloth-eared?) or otherwise independent third-party source that we cannot mention them here? How about in the mIRC article itself? We can certainly verify those features using mIRC's own documentation and website, which are certainly reliable and acceptable per WP:SELFPUB, but you won't find much in the way of "reliable" independent sources which give it too much coverage. You may find a number of people discussing the latest features in online forums or on their blogs, but those are far less "reliable" than the program's own site and documentation. As I said earlier: "A program's own documentation, website, source code, etc will also almost always be more authoritative in documenting a program's current features and functionality than a 3rd party book which covers a software program because software evolves much at a much faster rate than books can be published."

Your other argument of WP:SPAM (WP:PROMO) does not apply to the inclusion of Orion here either. Orion is a freely available open-source software program (verifiable). The developer does not make money from making the program freely available, and it actually costs him time (development, documentation, support, etc) and money (hosting) just to give it away to the larger online community. On the flip side of the coin, if this was instead a little-known commercial software program which a developer or company sold and used as a revenue source, I would have removed from this article myself, as I have with other software in the past.

The developer for Orion also didn't coverage of it to this article, I did, back in June 2009. While I don't think you intended to imply that I'm somehow a spammer for adding it here, that is exactly how it comes across to others when you referenced the WP:PROMO section of WP:SPAM.

Under the notability guideline, Orion doesn't (at least yet) qualify for a stand-alone article. As I stated above, the Alternatives to deletion section of the deletion policy states among other relevant things: "Articles that are short and unlikely to be expanded could be merged into larger articles or lists." This is also echoed by the WP:PRESERVE section of the editing policy and the WP:BEFORE section of articles for deletion. Per these policies and practices, Orion (IRC client) (which at the time was a tiny little sub-stub ) was merged and redirected here, where we were also able to give it much better coverage. --Tothwolf (talk) 18:11, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Your WP:UNCIVIL snark about my level of understanding notwithstanding, Misplaced Pages isn't about primary sources. Orion has zero verifiability: the fact of its existence is based entirely, and endlessly, on copy/paste of text from its original website (which lists zero details), and a few non-RS distribution sites. That's one way promo occurs - no matter who's doing it. The continued inclusion of WP:PROMO reflects badly on every Misplaced Pages editor who touches an article, and on Misplaced Pages as a whole. At no point have I implied any bad faith on any editor's part here - promo can be unintentional.

Everything about Orion in these tables is unsourced, and at the moment, unsourceable - therefore, it's WP:OR. Nothing added was based on reliable third-party sources, or the author's Orion webpage or Orion goes Open Source blog entry, or the program itself. The only claim supported is that it runs on "Windows", and that's on a separate page entirely. Where's the source that it doesn't handle proxies? The source code? The GUI? This is not a wikiwiki about software; verifiability at Misplaced Pages is intended for general readers to be able to verify claims made in any kind of Misplaced Pages article (prose, table, list) in reliable sources. Explicitly, WP:PRIMARY states, as policy, "A primary source may only be used on Misplaced Pages to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source." The "specialist knowledge" clause would tend to prevent using program source code as a primary source for lists of features, but may allow facts from "right-click/properties", or "Help" files.

There's a basic problem with using primary sources in comparisons: tables. In prose, Misplaced Pages distances itself, as described in WP:THIRDPARTY#Non-independent_sources as the authority for claims, by using language like, "The author of the software claims (x)." But in this article, in this table, there's no opportunity for this qualifying language. The presence of the table format itself lends WP:UNDUE weight to the table contents, as if they are verified as accurate, when in fact, no such proof exists, not even in the author's website. Do you really want Misplaced Pages to lend an authoritative "voice" to fundamentally unverified factoids? Yes, editors can "verify" features themselves by running the software, but that's original research, and it's not the way it's done at encyclopedias, or here.

Alternatives to deletion is a dead horse in this discussion - I daresay it is intended to apply to articles with prose, not lists or tables of comparison, and is not intended to give a pass to material lacking any independent reliable sources, only, as it explicitly states: "articles which are short and unlikely to be expanded." It is not appropriate to use WP:ATD to shoehorn a non-notable, non-verifiable item (Orion) into a larger encompassing article which contains no prose, and into a comparison table consisting of mostly independently WP:RS, verifiable items, mostly possessing their own articles.

mIRC has coverage in RS, both in magazines and books. What are you on about? As soon as a topic has any coverage in RS, a primary source can supply additional details about itself. Which has been my point all along. But here, Orion's publicly verifiable (verifiable by non-programmers) facts amount to nothing.

WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. Other articles about software do in part rely on primary sources such as websites, changelogs, even software binaries themselves, for occasional facts. These inclusions are always on the bubble, because they live in the shadow lands of not supported by reliable third party sources, and frequently not supported by primary sources. At any moment, a deletionist may challenge unsourced material, and delete it. For the sake of this article's strength in the face of AfD, it should not include unsourced material.

What's strange here is the inclusion of essentially abandonware which hasn't changed or been developed by anyone since 2006, which was never notable, and is now unlikely to ever be notable, or even (be honest) verifiable except through original research. On the website, Simone Tellini writes, "Since I haven’t had time to dedicate to this project in years, it’s now available under a Creative Commons license...". Specifically, per the blog, since 2006.

If Orion is so great, why hasn't even one independent reliable source written one thing about it?

Since this is only you and I on this, and since there are no clearly stated inclusion criteria, and since you seem unwilling to see shoehorning of unverifiable, unsourced claims as a problem, I think the next logical step is WP:3O.

--Lexein (talk) 08:47, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Lexein on this. (see below) IRWolfie- (talk) 20:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Lexein, I wasn't trying to be snarky with you, however if you are really only here to try to prove a point and just want to wikilawyer, I really don't feel that there is much of a reason for me to continue to attempt to have a discussion with you. Your comments thus far seem to indicate that you have a general dislike of Comparison of articles. Honestly, I'm not sure why you have chosen to focus on this specific article if it offends you so. There are millions of other articles you can go work on if you really don't like the content of this one...

Lexein, I really don't mind civil discourse and discussion as to the hows and whys "Comparison of" articles generally include the types of material they include and are structured the way they are. I understand not everyone (myself included) is going to be familiar with every single style and convention used on Misplaced Pages. That said, while you are certainly entitled to your opinions, and I've been more than willing to hear you out, it still doesn't change the fact that some of your arguments such as "Orion has zero verifiability" are factually incorrect.

Orion verifiably exists. I can't say the same thing for a number of other clients I've previously removed from the tables here which appeared to be drive-by additions. Many of these I couldn't find anything about them, be it primary sources, secondary sources, or really anything else. I'm not sure what you are referring to as a "copy/paste of text" as nothing was copy/pasted from somewhere else.

Orion's basic features and use of the Creative Commons license as an open source software program for the Microsoft Windows platform is verifiable using reliable (primary) sources which includes both its own website and the license text embedded and included with the source code for the program itself. Your apparent personal dislike of certain types of primary sources notwithstanding, material simply can't be WP:OR if it can be verified.

Further, not everything requires a citation (in particular, "Subject-specific common knowledge"), although as I've previously stated, I much prefer to have something to show that a particular program verifiably exists. I also really like to see an inline citation for the latest release version and date for a software program because it makes it much easier to keep an article updated. A non-contentious fact such as a native Microsoft Windows program not being supported by Mac OS generally does not need a citation. Having table cells which indicate this simply allow for sortable tables and makes the material more accessible to readers. The reverse however, might be best served by one or more inline citations, as it can be somewhat unusual for a native Microsoft Windows program to also have a native Mac OS version. That said, it wouldn't be all that surprising to see a well-written Unix-like program that is also compatible with say Mac OS X that can also be compiled under Cygwin on the Microsoft Windows platform.

The alternatives to deletion section of the deletion policy applies to all content, not just prose. It does not matter if you personally consider something to be "non-notable" or not. If our readers find the content you consider "non-notable" useful, we still have an obligation to include it. Despite your comments otherwise, general readers have demonstrated time and time again that they wish to be able to readily find more information in these comparison articles about software programs such as Orion by making comments to this effect on these talk pages and by trying to add such information to the article tables themselves. There also appears to be a very strong interest in open source software for the Microsoft Windows platform. Consensus outside of the discussion you and I have going on here continues to be that "Comparison of" articles are both encyclopedic and helpful for our readers. It has also been previously demonstrated that the more information these articles contain (subject to usability limits for typical web browsers), the more helpful our readers find them.

WP:PRIMARY does not state that the language of the source has to be English only, and as stated above, this is covered in WP:RSUE section of the verifiability policy. An "educated person" who can read and comprehend the language the source code is written in does not need to have any sort of "specialist knowledge". The ability to read a programming language is no different from the ability to read another foreign language. In fact, in most cases, the program's own documentation, which you also refer to as "right-click/properties" and "Help files" is more than sufficient anyway.

As for "qualifying language" we can and do use footnotes, which when used with tables, are typically located directly below the table. There was previously work underway right here within this article by a number of editors (including myself) to add additional footnotes and citations. The first step which was previously completed (before another editor came along and blanked roughly half of this article, which included the removal of sources in some cases) was to verify the existing content of the article and to correct or remove anything inaccurate or which could not be verified. This improvement work stopped when the events I linked to above began. At that point in the revision history of this article however, the material presented in the article was verifiable and had been fact checked by a number of editors.

The latest/current features and functionality of mIRC have not been covered in anything other than primary sources, including the program's own documentation. This is true for most software programs. You can't argue it both ways. Self-published primary sources can be used for such features/functionality verification and the notability guideline does not apply to article content.

I really don't see the point in involving WP:3O just because you don't personally agree with the longstanding practice of using reliable primary sources to verify software features and functionality for computing articles. This has been discussed previously within WP:COMP and WP:RSN and while you might not like the fact that we can and do cite a program's own documentation and/or source code for non-contentious facts about the program itself per the WP:SELFPUB section of the verifiability policy, this is commonly done and there is little point in arguing about it here.

To sum this up, again, the notability guideline does not restrict or limit article content. Self-published sources are perfectly acceptable for the verification of features and functionality for a particular software program. While English sources are generally preferable, it doesn't matter which language a source is written in – if a non-English source is available when an English source is not, or the non-English source is better, the non-English source can and should be used.

Lexein, there actually are other editors lurking and reading our discussion but I daresay that the majority just don't want or have time to argue these complex points with you :) --Tothwolf (talk) 06:35, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Many of the clients listed here are present with WP:UNDUE weight. "Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views." IRWolfie- (talk)

IRWolfie-, I don't agree with your WP:UNDUE assessment. We aren't attempting to discuss a "minority viewpoint" and the content is nothing more than facts, which is about as neutral as it gets. This article is specifically limited in scope to IRC clients, of which there are a finite number. There are roughly less than 100 client programs that have actually been popular with users over the last few decades (Microsoft Windows isn't the only operating system...), which prior to the blanking that occurred here, we only covered roughly 55-60 or so of those. Because we are already working within a very limited subtopic, claiming coverage of clients violates WP:UNDUE makes little sense.

As I've said previously, we end up violating WP:NPOV by presenting a skewed view of the topic as a whole if we attempt to misuse the notability guideline in order to remove and artificially limit article content to solely wiki-notable material. This is part of why the WP:NNC section of the notability guideline exists. If you misuse the notability guideline to remove and limit article content in an article such as this, it effectively turns a comparison article into nothing more than a navigational list or directory of other Misplaced Pages content, in which case, what is the point in even having comparison articles?

Subtopic navigation is not the intended purpose of a comparison article. Navigational lists are quite different from comparison articles and both are helpful for different purposes. While I do agree with you that we need some way to exclude some of the really "unpopular" (which is still a subjective way to describe it) clients (like the random visual basic clients I mentioned that anyone can whip up fairly quickly), we simply can't do this with the notability guideline as it was never intended to do this and is ill-suited for the task.

A fair number of entries which were removed from this article during the mass blanking are covered in books which are not indexed by Google Books (which I mentioned in earlier discussions). As I've also already mentioned above, Google Books does not index all works which give coverage to this subtopic or to the parent "Internet Relay Chat" topic. Google and Google Books are not magic and should not be used as a sole means of information gathering. The parent topic dates to about 1988, which predates the World Wide Web (1991), Google (1996-1998), and the Wayback Machine (1996 or thereabouts). This combined with the highly dynamic nature of web content (here one day, gone the next) means it can be just about impossible to use Google to find secondary sources for some of these older clients, even though they were once extremely popular and were at one time discussed widely. Can you find a non-primary source for the very first IRC client (simply called "irc") which was initially distributed with IRCd? I've been lucky just to be able to find the source code for this historic software program. Using subjective importance in terms of "I've never heard of it, it isn't notable" is not valid justification for removing article content.

For someone who is unfamiliar with the larger history of IRC, many of the clients might seem obscure, however we should give them limited coverage where we can (such as in a comparison article) so that people who wish to learn more about the larger topic can find more information on them. WP:ITSLOCAL states: "Stating an article should be deleted because you and most of the world do not know about it is akin to the I've never heard of it argument. Many subjects are esoteric, meaning that only a small crowd is familiar with them. For example, few people are aware or interested in some obscure forms of living things, space bodies, or scientific concepts, and few people will ever know about them in the first place in order to even desire to read about them. Yet there is sourced information about them, so they qualify to be included." and "The same is true about subjects only of interest to those in a single city, town, or region. People who live outside the area who have never visited there or done any research on the area will obviously be unlikely to have ever heard of them. But Misplaced Pages is not limited to subjects that everyone in the world knows or will have a good chance of knowing. Being a global encyclopedia, Misplaced Pages can cover a wide range of topics, many of them pertaining to the culture of a single country, language, or an ethnic group living in one part of the world. The people living in a single city or town and everything they have built around them are likewise a culture and society of their own." This becomes even more pertinent when you consider that Internet Relay Chat is effectively a society of its own (a fact which you can find stated in published works).

While the notability guideline should not be misused to limit the content of an article, notability is also not temporary. Just because someone was able to mass-prod and mass-AfD many of these articles (with about 1/3 or so still not yet restored) without due diligence and as an intentional means of being disruptive does not mean they should not have standalone articles. I've had many restored and worked on them one at a time as time permits, but the cleanup process for that mess is much more work than it was for that individual to mass-prod and mass-AfD articles.

IRWolfie-, since you seem to have an interest in Internet Relay Chat, if I compile my notes and create some sandboxed outlines and drafts, would you be interested in helping to sort this mess out and rebuild this content to make it more useful for our readers? How about articles for clients such as WSIRC, which was the dominant Microsoft Windows client prior to the introduction of mIRC? How about Grapevine for the Amiga platform, as noted above? --Tothwolf (talk) 00:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I was very explicit in saying that I think they have WP:UNDUE weight for inclusion, I did not mention notability. Undue Makes sense because some like ii which don't have their own article should not be included as the above quote showed. I should note also you reverted my edits where I removed ii because it was 'notable'; as you have just mentioned this is not grounds for inclusion and all others should also be removed that. (Side note: I notice you and Lexein leave giant comments, is this not a bit much!?) IRWolfie- (talk) 01:12, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

IRWolfie-, I didn't revert you specifically. If you check the edit history of the article, ii was included here previously and was one of those which was part of the mass-blanking of this article. I combined what an editor tried to add with the version I had in an offline copy and merged that back into the current version of the article after fact checking it (I found and corrected one minor mistake in the process).

ii is as far as I've been able to determine, the only IRC client which uses a FIFO filesystem as the "user interface". This makes it unique enough where I feel it should be included here. I'm not able to locate enough with a quick search where I feel it would meet the requirements of the notability guideline for the purposes of a standalone article, but it has been covered in depth by IRC-Junkie.org, which is considered a reliable secondary source for IRC-related news and information. It has also been a topic of interest over at reddit.

WP:UNDUE was never intended to exclude something like ii from an article such as this. There is no requirement that a subject have a standalone article (per the notability guideline) before it can also be discussed within another article. If this was the case, Misplaced Pages would be much, much smaller... As previously stated, the Alternatives to deletion section of the deletion policy states among other relevant things: "Articles that are short and unlikely to be expanded could be merged into larger articles or lists." The WP:PRESERVE section of the editing policy and the WP:BEFORE section of articles for deletion also cover this.

Would you argue WP:UNDUE in the case of the very first IRC client which was called irc that I mentioned above, or WSIRC, or even Grapevine? I agree that there are some things we should exclude here, however I'm of the opinion that we are far from violating WP:UNDUE by including information which is very much on-topic and of interest to readers who would otherwise be interested in reading about this (generally boring) subject. --Tothwolf (talk) 03:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Your grounds for including ii is that you think it is unique, uniqueness isn't grounds for inclusion either. you're basically saying it's notable just without using the word 'notable'. Being mentioned in irc-junkie isn't grounds for inclusion :). IRWolfie- (talk) 09:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

LimeChat

There are two different IRC clients named LimeChat. One is the one mentioned in this article, the other one is a Windows client by the same author. See here: http://limechat.net/ . It's currently at version 2.39, and seems to be available in Japanese only. It's, however, the most used IRC client in Japan, or at least as far as I remember, all Japanese people I've seen or known, use it. There's also a third one, for iOS. - 94.140.73.150 (talk) 11:43, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Please provide reliable sources to show it is the most used in Japan. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:40, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Firm rules for inclusion needed

Firm rules are needed for what should and should not be mentioned. The existence of a wiki article is a good indicator since it indicates reliable sources discuss the client. If the article doesn't exist, create one! otherwise If it's not notable enough for an article then it probably shouldn't be included here. ii is a good example, I've never seen a reliable source discussing it. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:35, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. It's time to establish a firm criteria for inclusion. The requirement of having an article looks good enough.

If one of the clients is not notable, then its article can be challenged via PROD and AFD (and contested at DRV). --Enric Naval (talk) 13:51, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that notability != importance. I'd rather go with the idea that if there is coverage of a client in reliable secondary sources, whether or not it would meet the GNG, and if the details which are needed for the the comparison can be reliably sourced, then it is worth including. The more inclusive the list, the more valuable it is to readers - and while there needs to be a limit that stops just anything being added, the GNG is too far in the other direction. - Bilby (talk) 13:57, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Right, my point has been that notability in terms of Misplaced Pages's notability guideline just doesn't work well for article content (hence why it explicitly states that the notability guideline does not apply to the inclusion/exclusion of content itself).

The problem with mandating a secondary source before adding material to this article where we already have reliable primary sources for plain and simple facts is that we still end up limiting the article's content in a subjective way and excluding material which is of interest to readers. As I mentioned above, due to the dynamic nature of the internet and web, you won't be able to find a non-primary source for anything related to many early (and previously popular) clients including the first one which was called "irc" that shipped with IRCd.

One major problem I've noticed in these discussions is that there are a number of editors who for whatever reason either dislike or don't understand that primary sources can be reliable in cases such as this where all we need them for are simple facts about the software itself. We've used such sources for software as far back as I know and they have never been a problem when used in this way.

I'm really beginning to question why we are even having this discussion here since we have not really had any sort of problems with spammers and drive-by promotional additions. This article used to be very "quiet" and fairly easy to maintain. There were a handful of editors (including myself) who did the majority of the cleanup and maintenance on this article. Had I not been involved with editing here, the editor who was keen on disrupting anything I edited as part of a larger harassment pattern (who is now indef blocked) along with a couple of his "friends" would have never even started this debate here in the first place. (There are also a few more questions directly related to the past harassment pattern which are beginning to form, but unless it becomes a problem again I don't see the need to bring those up at a larger venue.) --Tothwolf (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

"Popular" again, eh? Produce a reliable source supporting the popularity of any these obscure, decidedly unpopular clients. Misplaced Pages is not about sources you like, it's about independent reliable sources. Perhaps you missed reading WP:ATA - arguments to avoid in deletion discussions such as "It's interesting" and "it's popular."

I'm calling bullshit on your misrepresentation of my words. I never said primary sources can't be reliable. Primary sources can only be reliable about themselves as far as they actually make statements about themselves. Orion's author has written little or nothing about Orion - I've asked you to produce evidence of any such writings. None of the claims about Orion in this table, are sourced from anywhere, primary or third party, and definitely not the author's website or documentation.

Primary sources can be used in Misplaced Pages, if written as "Person says thing about themselves" or (stretching the meaning of primary source to the breaking point) "Software documentation lists this feature", with the source in an inline citation. Because this is not a wiki about software, and it is for general readers, it's NOT done to state "The software's source code claims this feature." In this comparison chart, (a) there's no place for any such disclaiming language, and this adds undue weight to the claims made, and (b) no inline citation is offered (with a primary or third-party source) which supports any of the claims made (and in the case of Orion, no such will likely ever be found). Sources, sources, sources. Why hasn't even the author written about its feature set, as detailed here, anywhere? And since the author hasn't written about its feature set (except in the source code), isn't anything you write about it an example of the very definition of original research? As Charlie Brooker has said, "Don't say it isn't, it is."

--Lexein (talk) 09:08, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

As I have previously mentioned undue weight is grounds for removal, "Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views.". When applying it to this comparison table it would be "Clients that are used by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those clients." Without significant discussion by reliable sources I see no reasons for inclusion, e.g being mentioned once by irc-junkie for example doesn't sound like significant grounds. Perhaps the unpopular clients and clients with reliable third party sources should be separated from the others so that they can stand or fall on their own weight? IRWolfie- (talk) 18:36, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

This isn't a deletion discussion, and this isn't about fringe views. Primary sources are useful for factual, uncontentious data: whether or not some software is written in C or Java, of if it runs under Windows or Linux, is exactly the sort of thing we can rely on primary sources for. Whether or not the software is extremely popular, or how it has influenced the market, is the sort of topic we can't rely on primary sources for, but that's the sort of question we don't ask in a comparative list like this. In regard to minority views, that policy was designed to reduce the impact of flat earthers or conspiracy theorists - it doesn't relate to the popularity of software, which also can't be calculated by coverage in reliable sources. I don't have a problem with the idea of having inclusion standards based on considerations of due weight, but applying those sorts of policies to a list about software won't really help things. - Bilby (talk) 23:04, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

So what then is the criteria for inclusion? What is to stop -any- and every client being added? IRWolfie- (talk) 23:10, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

IRWolfie-, To answer your earlier question first, detailed software reviews from a site that has a well established peer review system or the author of the review is a well established expert (such as what you see with the review of ii from IRC-Junkie) are considered to be reliable secondary sources, hence suitable for the purposes of establishing notability for the purposes of creating a standalone article. Not all software reviews are going to meet those qualifications though, including the canned reviews software authors can submit themselves to certain sites. In the past we only had a handful of sites like IRC-Junkie which were dedicated to IRC news, but today that is pretty much the only one left. IRC-Junkie has also previously pass muster for being a reliable source in and of itself, including several AfD discussions, so that review for ii is actually meaningful.

On to your current question, there actually aren't that many IRC clients out there. As I mentioned above, there are really only about 100 or so which have ever had much exposure at all (which covers all of these different operating systems and system architectures). That in and of itself defines a hard limit for what this article could ever possibly cover.

In the past I tended to remove drive-by entries which I thought were promotional efforts for commercial software, but I can count on one hand just how many of those I've had to deal with over the last 2+ years. We just never really had a problem here with drive-by additions trying to promote commercial software. The last several additions which have been discussed here were attempts by readers to restore content which this article previously covered before it was largely blanked by the efforts of a single individual.

We are also limited in terms of article size which is why both IM clients and mobile IRC clients are not included here. Article size limitations combined with the radically different operating system requirements of handheld/mobile devices are the reasons why mobile IRC clients were split out into their own comparison article. (Note that many of those clients are extremely popular with users of handheld devices and are very much in need of either standalone articles or coverage in a larger prose article.)

There is also common sense, in that if we can't find anything about a particular client, be it secondary coverage, primary coverage for non-controversial hard facts such as software requirements, features, functionality, etc, it will likely be considered either vaporware or a hoax and is unlikely to remain in the tables here.

The previous approach worked well enough which is why this massive discussion seems a little silly for this particular (boring) article. I really consider it a shame and a disservice for our readers that all this debate and disruption of the article content boils down to the previous disruptive actions by an individual who took to following my contribution history to find articles I previously edited in order to disrupt them and create strife among whoever they could draw in. Even though they are now no longer able to fan the flames on this talk page, the problems they created months and months prior continue. --Tothwolf (talk) 05:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not about promotion, it's about cruft and about non-notable items making it into lists. As I was saying, we need a inclusion criteria: that all entries have an article. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:16, 26 March 2011 (UTC):

Enric Naval: An article may be too much to ask. One independent, third-party, reliable source, plus one primary source (for details listed in the table), would be more than sufficient. I'm being inclusive here, and inclusionist as well. I'd accept a blog entry from an industry-notable author (an author who has been published in other notable publications.

To clarify: this discussion is only about this article's merits. What's happening is that a number of editors believe the material here should be sourced, or not be here. WP:RS are best. Primary sources can be used if they actually write something about themselves. (Orion's author wrote nothing about Orion.) "Hard facts" don't count unless they are, in the main, sourced. Unsourced "hard facts" are the very definition of original research.

• The only definition of "coverage" that matters to Misplaced Pages is discussion in third-party independent reliable sources. Primary sources aren't "coverage."
• This article is being scrutinized and discussed because its inclusion criteria are non-existent, and much of its content is unsourced.
• Several editors, (not "a single editor") aside from me, have removed unsourced material (though I'm the only one commenting out rather than deleting).
• There seems to be confusion of "uncontroversial" with "unchallengeable". All unsourced material can be challenged, and I have done so with Orion: it's unsourced because you didn't cite an independent WP:RS source, and even the primary source has no details; further no source exists which mentions its details; hence, it is unsourced.

The sad thing, from a Misplaced Pages policy, guideline, and essay point of view, is that this article has been allowed to fester, unsourced and unweeded, for so long. It might be a lovely tall garden of unsourced weeds, but they're weeds, nonetheless.

Look, this is not difficult. Find the independent RS sources to support a substantial number of claims about a client before putting material about that client in the article. I'm really not that fussy, believe me: I'm an inclusionist. --Lexein (talk) 10:04, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I would settle for multiple RS about the client, translating to "at least 2, better if it has 3". To avoid listing clients that only have one review in one publication, because wikipedia is not a directory listing of software programs. Borderline cases with one or two reviews can be discussed case-by-case, looking at the claims made by their RS.

For example, under this criteria, "ii" and "Orion" wouldn't have entries. But AmIRC would have an entry, but only because one of the porters claims that it influenced XChat (and, that source is not all that good; personally, honestly, I feel that it would be a bit weird not to have a single Amiga client in the list). --Enric Naval (talk) 11:36, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Enric, "cruft" and "non-notable" are your own personal opinions. You already made it clear that you aren't too familiar with this topic or material, so it would stand to reason then that continuing to try to apply your own subjective criteria is fatally flawed. You even removed the entry for KVIrc when that client had more than enough coverage (including published works) to justify a standalone article. The mass-prod and mass-AfD behaviour directly attributable to a small tag team which resulted in the majority of these "red link" entries was disruptive and problematic and it looks like the majority of us at least agree on that fact even though there is a lot of disagreement here with regards to this specific article. As for AmIRC, didn't you read above that we have two published sources for it anyway? Google is not a magic oracle.

Enric, the WP:NOTDIR argument you've tried repeatedly to use here hasn't held up in talk page discussions or AfDs for computing and software comparisons so you really should let that one drop.

Lexein and Enric, neither of you have addressed my point above regarding historically important clients like irc that originally shipped with IRCd. The only real sources we have for it today are primary sources such as its source code and the limited documentation. This also doesn't address clients such as XiRCON and Zircon which were also highly regarded by users and influential and previously included here.

Lexein, your personal opinion about both ii and Orion noted, I firmly believe both should be included here because our readers clearly want to know more about them. Misplaced Pages exists for our readers. Misplaced Pages is not a game for editors to play around with and keep busy with. How does removing simple factual data about these clients in any way help our readers learn more about this subject? Quite simply, it doesn't. Both of these specific clients are unique (as were most of those which were removed as part of the mass-blanking of this article) and our readers have demonstrated that they want to read more about them.

The size of the article was manageable, it was maintained, it had been fact checked (and work had been underway to expand the footnotes and in-line citations), and it did not have a problem with spammers using it for promotion of their commercial wares. Since we already violated the Misplaced Pages-equivalent of Godwin's law by bringing up conspiracy theorists above, to quote the late great Chuck Shramek, What the hell is going on?!

While I fully agree that we really should have sources (be it secondary or reliable primary), trying to limit this article's content in a subjective way, be it up front WP:N or backdoor "must have a reliable secondary source" (exact same result as WP:N) before we can have an entry here only hurts our readers. This whole subjective busy-body task of removing on-topic, verifiable material only results in an article which is of far less value to our readers. --Tothwolf (talk) 21:57, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

You are right, I hadn't spotted that part of the discussion. So, that only means that AmIRC would be guaranteed an entry in the list. It doesn't undermine my main point: that we should remove entries with no RS. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:42, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll be brief. There is zero value to Misplaced Pages readers if claims cannot be verified from independent reliable sources. This is a fact of Misplaced Pages enshrined as a bedrock policy with which you have so far refused to embrace. Claims unsupported by published independent sources directly damage Misplaced Pages's credibility, reducing it to a blog, a catalog or PR. Once the toehold of even a single discussion by third-party reliable source is established, I'm willing to be inclusive of primary sources which actually write about themselves (which Orion's author has not). BTW I'd even cite newsgroup archives. Nothing about Orion there, either, I'm afraid. --Lexein (talk) 17:28, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

A vote (open for a week) should perhaps be taken to determine if an existing article on the client is needed for inclusion here or not. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

While I don't like making short replies with just a link to a policy or guideline, such a vote would be counter to WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and WP:VOTE. Aside from that, a one-size-fits-all approach isn't going to work, be it here, or with other "Comparison of ..." articles. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

A call for a "vote" is really a call for concise discussion to reach consensus about something. The following is how it's done. --Lexein (talk) 17:28, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria request for comment

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. Within 24 hours, this page will be added to the following list: Maths, science, and technology When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

This is not a vote. Briefly discuss your position (support, oppose, or neutral) "inclusion criteria" and what, if any, they should be. Wherever possible, provide wikilinks to appropriate sections of policy/guideline/essay. Should the criteria be No criteria, or a standalone article is required, or one or more third-party source(s), or a primary source which has details about the item, or a non-detailed primary source which has no details about the item? --Lexein (talk) 17:28, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Support

• Support, one 3rd-party WP:RS is enough, per WP:TRUTH. Verifiability, for WP, requires 3rd party independent reliable source(s). Items here might not have enough notability for a standalone article, but still have enough verifiability for inclusion here. Primary source(s) are acceptable for details, as long as some of those details are supported in 3rd party source(s). --Lexein (talk) 17:28, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support, one 3rd-party WP:RS per Lexein. (my dream would be that every feature is sourced...) mabdul 17:59, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support, one article, or multiple 3rd-party RS for entries with no articles, to avoid the inclusion of entries that only have one review in one software website. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support, one article, or multiple 3rd-party RS for entries with no articles (for the same reasoning as Enric Naval). IRWolfie- (talk) 21:25, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

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