Talk:Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients/Archive 3

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IRCjr client

Forgive me for bringing this up ... While it may have been acceptable to delete the IRCjr standalone article due to 'notability' reasons, removing it from the client comparisons seems a little harsh.

For those 99.9% of you who have moved on to more advanced operating systems, IRCjr is a client for DOS. It runs on everything from DOS 2.1 up to the latest versions and variants, including FreeDOS. It does fine in emulated DOS environments like DOSBox under Windows or Linux. It runs on the slowest IBM compatible machines to the fastest emulated machines like VirtualBox.

This will be it's 3rd year of active development. Is it notable enough to appear in the comparisons? (There are a few people in the vintage computer community using it. Other clients for DOS are in the comparison table even though they haven't been touched in years.)

Disclaimer: I am the author of this program ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.42.66.188 (talk) 03:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

- I am a heavy user of this client, and I absolutely love it. It's special and notable because it is the ONLY currently active DOS client. A new version was released 2 days ago. I think it should very much be included in the table, as it is important to the thousands of people out there who still love DOS and want to do something useful with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.119.188.81 (talk) 03:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

"I like it" is not grounds for inclusion, show reliable third party sources discussing it. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
The notability guideline is also not grounds for exclusion. I will be restoring this client to this article's tables in the near future. This is a spinout article from Internet Relay Chat and I will be restoring proper coverage of many of these clients. The individual who removed them AfD'd this article twice prior to blanking half the article, with both AN/I consensus and Arbcom sanctions finding his actions to be disruptive. --Tothwolf (talk) 17:14, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Failing the "criteria for inclusion in this list" is a ground for exclusion. We are discussing such a criteria in the section above. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:34, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

- Sorry - there was no intention to astroturf there, I just made the mistake of mentioning the omission of IRCjr from the client comparison in, of all places, an IRC channel.

Regardless of that, what good is the criteria for inclusion in the list if it is subjectively applied? It is notable in that it is the only DOS client still being developed. Other people are using it. And it is at least as notable as some of the other clients on the list. (Hint: There is another DOS client there that would be removed if you applied the criteria evenly.) It is freely available, and has been so continuously since it's first release nearly three years ago.

No, it's not going to be reviewed in PC World or the NY Times. That should not preclude somebody from spending a few bits to include it in the comparison tables. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.42.66.188 (talk) 00:04, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Asking for inclusion because you feel it is notable is subjective, a clear cut requirement for reliable sources discussing it is not. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Attempting to mandate that each bit of information in an article conform to WP:N is also unacceptable. WP:NNC is explicit in that the notability guideline does not apply to article content. WP:V is policy and the only thing that matters here. We don't have an issue with verification of the content; the only issue we have here are a couple of editors who've never edited here showing up to try to push their own agenda in order to use it as a precedence elsewhere. Put simply, it isn't going to fly. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:43, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
A comparison list is closer to a list than a regular article, also see Wikipedia:Stand-alone_list#Common_selection_criteria for why notability matters. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:57, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Enric already tried that argument. Comparison articles are not stand-alone lists. This has previously come up in AfD and elsewhere. One editor who tried to have this article deleted twice even tried renaming this article [1] as List of Internet Relay Chat clients. This would be a stand-alone list if it looked like the previously deleted User:Tothwolf/List of Internet Relay Chat clients draft which is in my userspace. Thankfully, this article doesn't look anything like that list. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, they are. List articles in table format are mentioned in WP:LISTNAME and in Wikipedia:Lists_(stand-alone_lists)#General_formatting. It even mentions the sortable columns. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:25, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
It is as notable as many other clients on the list, and not just by the strict definition of "notable" which is being incorrectly applied here. And you are doing your readers a disservice by refusing to acknowledge the existing of this, and possibly other IRC clients. What exactly are we protecting the readers of this article from by excluding it? So few IRC clients exist for any DOS flavor operating system, refusing to list the only one in active development is kind of ludicrous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mbbrutman (talk • contribs) 21:25, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Your client has no particular grounds for inclusion. If it's discussed by reliable sources then list them. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:34, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
IRWolfie-, I happen to disagree. Name one DOS IRC client which has been covered in depth in a 3rd party source. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
That is your flawed judgment. Once again, we are not asking for a separate article so you are misapplying the notability guidelines. It is the only DOS client in active development - that covers PC DOS, MS DOS, FreeDOS, and all of the other DOS clones and emulators out there. Nobody stands to gain anything from listing it here; you are only doing your readers a disservice by refusing to acknowledge its existence. What are you protecting the readers from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mbbrutman (talk • contribs) 22:05, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

summary

ok, thats really crazy and too much for me to read. What is the actual discussion and what are the arguments. I have now again a new laptop and access to the internet. I will discuss if somebody give me a short briefing of the actual state... mabdul 11:13, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

--> This article includes IRC clients that:
  • a) don't have a wikipedia article and/or
  • b) have only one or two secondary independent RS that are more than compilations of software and/or
  • c) they have zero secondary independent RS, but they have primary sources (some have detailed sources, and other have primary sources that don't go into details)
Some people want to remove only the ones that fall under c, other want to remove the ones under both b and c (remove anything that doesn't have at least one or two RS), and some want to remove anything under a b or c (remove anything that doesn't have a blue link, if you have RS then go write an article).
There is an open RfC above (please comment there?), and the compromise of "at least one RS" seems to be emerging as the option with the most consensus. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Well now, that's certainly oversimplifying a number of things. Let's go for even simpler: Enric, you have been POV pushing for months to require each entry here to meet the notability guideline in an attempt to restrict article content in direct conflict with the WP:NNC section of WP:N. (Nevermind the fact you've made 0 contributions to articles within this subject area, that is, if we don't count your edit warring over removing content here.) As pointed out both here, in the archives, AfD, and elsewhere, by myself and numerous others, the notability guideline is not intended to restrict article content. WP:V is policy. Per that policy, for the purposes of noting simple features and functionality of a software program, self-published sources can be used. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:31, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Replying in Tothwolf's talk page. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I wonder if we are reading the same policies. WP:V doesn't say "you can add anything to the article as soon as you can find a source for it, even if it's just the programmer's comments in the source code of the program". And have you actually read WP:SPS? Please actually read this text before claiming againg that WP:SPS allows you to use any and all self-published source for anything: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Take care when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so.". --Enric Naval (talk) 12:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I cited WP:SELFPUB not WP:SPS. As others have pointed out, we can use a software program's own documentation or source code to cite "Program X supports feature Y". Using a source in this way is acceptable, however we can't use it to draw our own conclusion of "Program A is better than program B because program A supports feature C" because that would be original research. Please stop trying to put words in my mouth to try to deceive and mislead others. --Tothwolf (talk) 13:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, WP:SELFPUB says "(...) as long as (...) 5. the article is not based primarily on such sources." And you are proposing to include programs that are supported only by such sources...... --Enric Naval (talk) 13:32, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
If you are going to argue notability again, we actually do have 3rd party sources available which establish notability for roughly 75% of the clients we should be covering here (including many that were removed as "red-links"). Per your own argument, this means we are quite ok per WP:SELFPUB. --Tothwolf (talk) 14:35, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
(accidentally acknowledging that 25% of clients don't have any third party sources.... --Enric Naval (talk) 14:56, 13 April 2011 (UTC))
Accidentally? Oh, there are a lot more clients "out there" than that 25%, but there are only about 25% or so which we should be covering here which haven't been covered in a dead-tree source. This isn't a problem however, as we only need to worry about the verifiability policy, as the notability guideline does not limit article content and the subject of "Intetnet Relay Chat clients" is notable and not in question.

Say, since you seem to know so much about IRC clients, which Microsoft Windows IRC client was first to support colored text? --Tothwolf (talk) 17:37, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Considering adding a client

Specifically, a client written by me. Since I'm not quite bold enough to just go ahead and add it, I'd like to know: Does having been packaged for a popular Linux distribution (openSUSE) by someone wholly independent of me have a similar WP:RS weight to a "two-line review in an online magazine", which is (approximately) what Lexein seems to want? My opinion is that it may be enough to justify the standalone article and is most probably enough to justify inclusion in the list. If the latter but not the former, I'd move the article back into my userspace (until it becomes more notable, if that ever happens) and put the appropriate information into the table; if neither, then move and leave the table as it is. Given all the above discussion, I'm rather unsure what the criteria for inclusion are, although being an inclusionist I find myself in agreement with Tothwolf. PT (talk) 13:51, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's sufficiently notable for its own article. Gigs (talk) 17:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Reversion of unilateral action

At the time User:SchmuckyTheCat made this edit, there was no consensus in the RfC (above) for requiring "supported by at least one significant third party source" (emphasis mine); SchmuckyTheCat was the only commenter to have proposed such a rule, the rest of the !votes being either for WP:V, "one third-party WP:RS", or "own article". Moreover, while his edit summary claims "rm this client", he actually removed two clients, one of which is supported by what appear to be reliable references. I have reverted his unilateral action. PT 14:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Lexein asked that the source was independent, Mabdul said "per Lexein", Yarcanox said "as Lexein specifies", /me said "a good source" (meaning independent and significant).
At least, we are in agreement that we can remove clients that don't have any third-party RS, right? --Enric Naval (talk) 20:14, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Not really. Unless you want to be reverted, you still are going to have to discuss such removals on the talk page first and show cause for removing an entry. There are a lot of books and other sources which aren't indexed by Google. --Tothwolf (talk) 20:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
  1. Everybody, ignore all threats. If deletion of an item will prompt Tothwolf into providing inline citations of sources which can be verified by a visit to a (public, university, corporate) library(book, periodical, microfilm, microfiche), then it might be worth it. But maybe it's not necessary...
  2. Tothwolf, give it. To head off edit warring, cough up those "lots of books and other sources which aren't indexed by Google," (aside from the AmIRC and others already mentioned above, thanks) either publicly in your userspace, or privately to me by email. Doing so will only help everyone improve this and other articles. I'll be happy to verify the existence of any proffered sources, and even go to a library or two to verify citations; I go pretty regularly anyways. Seriously, I'm laughing here, nobody cares that they're not indexed by Google. --Lexein (talk) 03:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
...and in reviewing SchmuckyTheCat's edit, [2] AmIRC as discussed on this talk page has multiple RS anyway (books). I'll also state for the record that SchmuckyTheCat is only here because I banned him from posting comments to my old LiveJournal. I wonder if SchmuckyTheCat would like those comments made public here? --Tothwolf (talk) 20:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
It's the article, not the editors. If you have any more(aside from the already mentioned ones above) non-indexed-by-Google sources, you would be helping everyone improve this article by coughing them up. --Lexein (talk) 03:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Orion was already discussed here. Do you have any third-party RS that makes it fulfill the inclusion criteria? --Enric Naval (talk) 21:45, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think anyone who wanted to require sources is going to object to those sources being reliable and significant. I'm not sure the sources in the article for AMirc meet either criteria. Let's start a different discussion there.
Orion was marked out as commented code. There is no reason to keep that. I am looking above at the clients IRWolfie proposed for removal. Post RFC, I see his list as being those that should be removed. There are also clients that are blue links only by virtue of being redirects. They should be removed as well. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Dispute resolution

I have removed your request for WP:3O as more than two people have already been involved in this discussion. I suggest you continue with your WP:RFC and move into other phases of WP:Disputes as required. - Pictureprovince (talk) 15:07, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Even though the 3O was denied, I'd like to jump in to point out that notability has absolutely nothing to do with article contents, and should not be used to limit the contents of articles. Self published sources can be used within the limitations set out at WP:SELFPUB, and that includes the works themselves. Just be careful not to extrapolate or draw new conclusions based on self published sources, that would be original research. Gigs (talk) 03:44, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
But it is relevant when we are talking about lists, which this effectively is. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:22, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
This article is not a stand-alone list. Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients (and other articles within Category:Software comparisons) contain clearly definable comparative elements and are not "simple lists of wikilinks" intended to be used for navigation. Contrast with this userfied stand-alone list draft in my userspace: User:Tothwolf/List of Internet Relay Chat clients.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) and WP:NNC apply to lists which consist of wikilinks, not articles that include tables of information which might also include wikilinks. The text in the WP:LSC section of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) was intended to keep navigational lists from growing out of hand with red-links and was never intended to conflict with the WP:NNC section of the notability guideline. (Also of note is the text at WP:NNC has recently been changed without much in the way of discussion as it previously only referred to lists of people. WP:LSC even still include a hatnote for Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Lists of people.)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) (which WP:LSC is a subsection of) specifically states: "Stand-alone lists and "lists of links" are articles that primarily consist of a list or a group of lists, linking to articles or lists in a particular subject area, such as a timeline of events or people and places. The titles of these articles usually begin with "list of" or "timeline of"."

Most "Comparison of ..." articles are clearly much more than a list of links to articles, so just going by the guideline's own criteria, most "Comparison of ..." articles should not be considered a "stand alone list". With a "List of ..." stand-alone list it would make no sense whatsoever to create a list of nothing more than red-linked entries without articles, especially if it is unlikely that those red-links would ever link to articles. For a "Comparison of" article on the other hand, it can make a lot of sense to cover material which may not necessarily have its own article purely for the purposes of comparison.

To further clarify the key differences between "List of x" and "Comparison of x", two examples of lists which use a "table layout" are List of HTML editors (bulleted multi-column) and List of GNU packages (wikitable). Neither of these make any sort of comparisons between the entries, nor are they sortable on a per element basis. Further comparison of Category:Software comparisons and Category:Lists of software will also help clarify the differences between "Comparison of ..." articles and "List of ..." stand-alone lists. --Tothwolf (talk) 14:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a list article with a table format. Please check WP:LISTNAME "If (as is often the case), the list has multiple columns and so is in table form, the name or title List of Xs is still preferable to Table of Xs or Comparison of Xs.". And also Wikipedia:Lists_(stand-alone_lists)#General_formatting "There are a number of formats, both generalized and specialized, that are currently used on Wikipedia, for list articles. (...) 5. Sortable lists, which are formatted as tables, such as List of social networking websites‎.". The guideline on list articles clearly indicates that this article is a list article.
If you want this article to be treated as non-list, then you need first to re-write it. As it currently stands it's a list in table format, with some sortable columns. There are no sourced comparisons among clients, no sources that make direct comparisons between two or more clients (client X is better than client Y and worse than client Z), etc.
Also, I invoke WP:OTHERSTUFF, check List of Unified Modeling Language tools, which has the same format as this article. Notice how this whole situation leads to stuff like List of Unified Modeling Language tools being included in Category:Software comparisons, and then Comparison of disk cloning software being included in Category:Lists of software. Another example: people trying to merge List of disk cloning software into Comparison of disk cloning software because they are the exact same list, with the comparison article listing more details in table format.
So, no, this is currently a list article, so inclusion criteria for lists are applicable. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:10, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
First, you've previously tried this very WP:LISTNAME argument without success. This is at least the third attempt you've made to invoke it here. You previously tried this argument without success here. You also made the same argument while trying to do the exact same thing User:JBsupreme tried (after his multiple AfD attempts at deletion of this article failed) with a move request and there too it was discarded.

Second, WP:LISTNAME is a section of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) which is a Manual of Style guideline, not a policy or content guideline.

Third, as has come up in our previous discussions regarding WP:LISTNAME, that section of text has not been maintained and is unfortunately not entirely in-sync with the way things are currently done or have been done for quite some time. It was written before Wikipedia grew to what it is today and should be updated, but that hasn't yet happened. Manual of Style pages and similar guides are notorious for not being maintained and up to date with current practice.

This is precisely why WP:GUIDES states: "Guidelines are sets of best practices that are supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." which is also echoed in template messages such as {{MoS-guideline}} and {{Guideline}}, which respectively state: "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions." and "This page documents an English Wikipedia guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply."

Now, I'll invoke Wikipedia:Five pillars, the very beginning of which states: "Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." and the very last section states: "Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Rules on Wikipedia are not fixed in stone, and the spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule."

To sum this up, Wikipedia exists for our readers, not the editors. If readers find the inclusion of specific material helpful to them while making use of Wikipedia, then it should be included. If the material would not be helpful to a reader, then it should be excluded. Comparison of articles are among some of our more popular computing articles (see WP:COMP/PP). It would be a huge disservice to our readers if we go against WP:NNC ("The notability guidelines are only used to determine whether a topic can have its own separate article on Wikipedia and do not govern article content.") and attempt to cut down all "comparison of" articles to material which would only meet the guidelines for a stand-alone article, as this would then remove a huge amount of material which our readers actually wish to know more about.

Enric, you've attempted again and again to force the notability guideline on article content here using every possible method you could come up with. Mind WP:STICK / WP:POINT and go find something else to do that doesn't involve edit warring and being disruptive to others' editing. --Tothwolf (talk) 18:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Looking back at the renaming from "list of" to "comparison of", even the nominator ends up citing WP:LISTNAME to support his position. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Enric, wow, why am I not surprised that you are still trying to misrepresent and mislead others? I linked to your move request, not the move revert request from 10 months earlier. I also see the nom in the move revert request stating: "I think it's clearly a comparison, not a list." [3] as well as: "It has more than just one table. It's not a list, that's obvious. It's a comparison article like all the ones on Category:Software comparisons (except for those called List* of course)." [4] This was also directly related to User:JBsupreme's moving of this article to List of Internet Relay Chat clients [5] just before his second attempt at nominating this article for deletion. (related AN/I discussion, see also this AN/I discussion) --Tothwolf (talk) 19:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
You are free to be surprised by whatever you want (purposefully avoiding a nit-picking discussion because I have had many of them and they don't usually result in improvements to aricles). The point being: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists), as currently written, says that this article is a list. Is it much to ask that you go to the talk page of that guideline and that you propose that the guideline is changed to say that articles like this one are not lists? --Enric Naval (talk) 22:23, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) (and WP:LISTNAME) is still a Manual of Style guide and not a policy or content guideline.

Enric, you and I have already had this discussion before, so you already knew Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) isn't exactly up to date with common practice. I had actually planned to work on drafting a proper Manual of Style page for comparison articles, however this silliness has taken a significant amount of time away from that and the article expansions I'm currently working on.

In all fairness, at one time we did have a large number of "List of" stand-alone lists which were named "Comparison of", however the majority of those have long since been renamed "List of". This is why that text is written the way it is, and it was written before our number of true comparison articles (Category:Comparisons, Category:Computing comparisons, etc) grew to what it is today. There are probably a few stand-alone lists still currently named "Comparison of", but that still does not change the fact that there is a clear difference between a stand-alone list such as User:Tothwolf/List of Internet Relay Chat clients and a comparison article such as Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients.

And yes, all this discussion makes it quite clear that we desperately need to improve the wording at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (stand-alone lists) as it is somewhat misleading as currently written. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:02, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey, look at what it says at the top of Category:Comparisons "A comparison article deals with similar topics where differences are displayed and examined.". Oh, look, these words don't describe this article at all. (What we should do is reinforce WP:LISTNAME to say that all list articles should be called "List of", so we won't have people filling the comparison category with articles that don't contain any actual comparison, like this one here. But that's something for the guideline's talk page.) --Enric Naval (talk) 08:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh look, Category:Comparisons isn't a guideline or policy. Oh and hey, look, WP:LISTNAME is a Manual of Style guide page which is in need of some updating, (and not a policy or content guideline, as you keep trying to imply). Enric, mind WP:STICK and go do something else that doesn't involve edit warring and POV pushing. You've been trying this since January and October-November 2010:

"Delete all the non-notable entries. Lots of indiscriminate information, remove all the redlinked programs" [6]
"See WP:NNC (notability guideline), which sends you to WP:LSC (content guideline)." [7] (Never mind the fact WP:LSC is part of the Manual of Style concerning list formatting and not a "content guideline".)
"Right, but the non-redlinked entry should have a third-party independent source, showing that it's notable for this topic, or relevant enough, or worth including for some completion purposes (like, for example, listing the first client for system X even if it doesn't have an article, because it influenced later clients)." [8] (Hrm... irc2.4? WSIRC? sirc? Zircon? AmIRC? ShadowIRC? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)
"No, not to verify that it actually exists, but to verify that it's notable or relevant enough to include" [9]
"Please check WP:LISTNAME, "comparison of X in table format" is still a list article. And it doesn't make sense to compare non-notable products to notable ones, when from the start we were only supposed to cover the non-notable ones (again, we can make exceptions for products that are relevant for comparison, but they still need a source to show the relevancy)." [10]
"See WP:OTHERSTUFF. We are not serving the reader by indiscriminately listing lots of non-notable stuff." [11] (Well now, that argument sure looks familiar doesn't it? [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] And hey, would you look at that, he even tried to use an unrelated AfD for User:Tothwolf/List of Internet Relay Chat clients as a reason to delete Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients. [24]) You know, perhaps it's time to do some DB queries and see what shakes out...
"This article has no comparisons, sourced or unsourced, just a list in form of table." [25]
"The above discussion already had consensus and arguments to move to "List of". It was closed just because someone had moved the page at mid-discussion." [26] (Uhm, no it didn't. The page was moved without discussion to "List of" by User:JBsupreme just prior to his second AfD attempt. It was moved back to "Comparison of".)
"Also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Software/Archive_3#renaming_all_.22comparison_of....22_to_.22list_of....22, to see if we can end with this situation where some lists in table format are called comparisons." [27] (Yeah, that'll go over really well... Nice post to an inactive WikiProject's talk page archive...)

Enric (or whatever name you wish to go by this week), move on. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

He does have a point with his requests, perhaps we could split the more notable clients from the unnotable ones into two separate tables in this article. At least then the unnotable clients without reliable sources can stand or fall by their own merit. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:42, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't see how it would be possible to split something like that into a separate table. We have multiple tables and splitting content in that way would pretty much be impossible. It would also violate WP:POVFORK because we would end up being subjective and again applying the notability guideline to article content (which, again, per WP:NNC we aren't supposed to do anyway since doing so ends up violating the neutral point of view policy).

In your opinion, what exactly makes the very first IRC client which was included with the very first IRCd (irc2.4) "non-notable"? It was written by Jarkko Oikarinen while creating RFC 1459 and was used as the reference standard for ircII and other IRC clients which came later. What makes ii "non-notable"? It is the only IRC client which uses a FIFO filesystem as the "user interface".

While not currently included in this article, we have reliable self-published sources for these and other IRC clients, including the source code and documentation embedded in the source code for irc2.4, so we aren't violating the verifiability policy. These type of self-published sources are considered to be reliable when it comes to information about the subject itself. We can't draw our own conclusions from them "Program x is better than program y because ..." because that would be original research, but they are perfectly acceptable to show that "Program x supports feature y".

Why should we prevent readers from reading about IRC clients such as the very first IRC client? How does preventing readers from knowing more about something historically important to this topic help improve Wikipedia? We don't have any issues with the verifiability policy, and since the topic of "Internet Relay Chat clients" itself is notable per the notability guideline, there is no reason not to give the topic itself proper coverage.

Overall, very very few IRC clients have been given more than a sentence or two or three when they are discussed in a dead tree source, so if you start trying to apply the notability guideline to content in this article, we end up with probably only about 8 or 9 clients discussed in this article. Expanding that to reviews which have been found suitable per the notability guideline for the purposes of standalone articles (during the numerous AfDs, at WP:RSN, etc), that number roughly doubles.

Readers come here expecting to find a fairly comprehensive summary of the features of the IRC clients which are known within the IRC community. How does limiting this article to clients which could have standalone articles help those readers find the information they are looking for?

Again, what is wrong with reliable self-published sources, including an IRC client's own documentation and source code when they are used only to note the features of the client itself? --Tothwolf (talk) 22:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

"There are thousands of clients which have only their own page as a source."[citation needed]
There are thousands of clients which have only their own page as a source. are you saying they should be included too? IRWolfie- (talk) 18:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Thousands? Care to back that up with a reference or a reliable source? All kidding aside, you are exaggerating quite a bit. Why not leave the article editing to the experts? MBBrutman 20 April 2011 —Preceding undated comment added 01:18, 21 April 2011 (UTC).
I think it's quite fair to assume that at least a thousand people have seperately created a client for IRC to varying degrees of quality (even if noone uses them). we have clients which are only 400 lines long in the comparison article here. and please no "leave it to the experts" drivel. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's appropriate at all for you to make a claim of "There are thousands of clients which have only their own page as a source. are you saying they should be included too?" when this is not and has never been true. --Tothwolf (talk) 08:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
IRWolfie-, LOL "Thousands?" Now that's quite an exaggeration indeed! Considering your involvement with Eloxoph and WeIRCd (I don't see you arguing to remove WeIRCd from the other comparison article, and only about half of those software programs have been mentioned in published books) you know that "thousands of clients" is a massive exaggeration. There are roughly a dozen or so Microsoft Windows clients which have been popular or somewhat well known within the IRC community, 3 clients for MSDOS, 8-10 for MacOS and MacOS X, 5-6 for the Amiga platform, maybe another 18-20 which support various other platforms or are platform independent (Java, Perl, Ruby, Tcl, etc), and maybe 3-5 which are web-based, including CGI:IRC, PJIRC, and Mibbit.

Let's see... 12+3+10+6+20+5 ...that leaves us with roughly 56 IRC clients, so even if I happen to be underestimating by as much as 100%, the total number of IRC clients is still quite far from thousands. Mbbrutman, do those numbers sound about right to you?

IRWolfie-, Now, are you going to answer my question, or are you going to try to change the subject again?

What is wrong with reliable self-published sources, including an IRC client's own documentation and source code when they are used only to note the features of the client itself? I'm beginning to think you don't want to answer this question because as a software developer, you know quite well that a software program's own source code is a definitive and highly reliable self-published source which documents the features and functionality of a software program. As a source, it is more reliable than documentation included with a program, but either of these is more reliable than a published book, which due to how quickly software evolves and the way the publishing process works, is going to be outdated by the time the book is printed (for some very good examples, see the books about Samba or the Linux kernel, especially the device driver code layer).

As per above (and in the talk page archives here, RS/N, and other talk pages), the notability guideline isn't an issue here since the subject of "IRC clients" is quite notable and we do not use the notability guideline to limit the coverage of a subject. The notability guideline might be used at times to limit the number of red-links in navigational lists such as say List of people connected to Gothenburg, but not articles which contain much more than a list of wikilinks.

...so, again, what's wrong with reliable self-published sources such as an IRC client's own documentation and source code used per the verifiability policy for verification of the features and functionality of software? We've used these exact type of self-published sources for years within articles under the WP:COMP and WP:COMPSCI project scopes so it seems kinda silly for you to argue against them here. --Tothwolf (talk) 03:43, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Who mentioned popularity? Unpopular/unused clients are in this list, I didn't say there were thousands of popular clients, I am saying there are thousands of clients that noone uses except their creator. For example, check here and take your pick [28]. What is your exclusion criteria to prevent these being included? I've no particular issue with verifiability even with primary sources as long as we have an exclusion criteria. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
There are not "thousands" of IRC clients out there and it is inappropriate for you to claim that there are "there are thousands of clients that noone uses except their creator" in an attempt to justify removing material here. We don't remove clients such as Homer, PIRCH, etc just because they are no longer in common use.

As for your link, note Google result counts are a meaningless metric, WP:SET and WP:GNUM. A handful of those clients were previously included before this article prior to it being mass blanked (some of them even meet the notability guideline and would support a standalone article). I'll be reverting that blanking soon so we can begin restoring and adding citations for the material. --Tothwolf (talk) 08:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Sourceforge is not a search engine. They host actual projects which there are links to. count some of them if you wish. it shows there are many times more than the 56 you claim. see here [29] also for a list containing much above 56 clients. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:47, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
IRWolfie-, The SourceForge link you included http://sourceforge.net/search/?q=irc+client is a link to search results, so why are you now claiming that it is not a search engine? Moreover, the default search is "Relevance", which is going return all results which include partial matches of both of the keywords "IRC" and "client", so of course you are going to see a lot of non-"IRC client" results in that search (in addition to non-IRC stuff, it includes bots, daemons, servers, utilities, scripts, and a heck of a lot more). Again, you need to read Google result counts are a meaningless metric.

The ircreviews.org link you just mentioned http://www.ircreviews.org/clients/platforms-windows.html is not a reliable metric to use for the number of clients. It contains "IRC programs", not just "IRC clients", which also includes quite a number of Instant messaging programs and other programs which are not standalone "IRC clients". I'm familiar with their site and I've seen all sorts of mislabeled and even vaporware listed before. Occasionally there will be something useful in the mix, but most of the time their site doesn't seem to be too useful. --Tothwolf (talk) 02:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

No, there are not "Thousands" of IRC clients. That is why I asked for a reference or a reliable source - there are none that can verify that claim, or any number even close to that.

What I'm failing to understand is how somebody who is so loose with "facts" here in this discussion can justify excluding clients that are "not notable". IRWolfie, you clearly should not be putting yourself in a position to determine what is notable and what is not when you are so willing to casually make broad and incorrect assertions like you did above, while refusing to show a reliable source. (Even though you insist that others do!) MBBrutman 22:02, 22 April 2011 (CST)

Oh please, just because there is no particular citation for something doesn't mean it is not true, especially for this informal discussion. There are many many clients, that exist, many people do develop their own personal small irc client even for test purposes. I am not claiming there are thousands of fully fledged, up to date supported clients but many clients that have been developed for personal use alone. many times more than the "56" mentioned. if you think there isn't, make a list and I can guarantee I can find more that aren't on that list. I feel your conflict of interest for trying to include your own personal client may be clouding your judgement on this. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Dammit IRWolfie-, stop attacking Mbbrutman. If you have a gripe with IRCjr being included here, then take it up with either me or Mabdul since we were the ones who were working on this material at the time.

As for your claims of 1000s of IRC clients, there might be 100-150 or so, tops, including the tiny little visual basic clients that no one really cares about. I can think of roughly 50-60 that have actually made a mark on the IRC community. This is far from thousands. --Tothwolf (talk) 18:23, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

My two cents here for more civility - IRWolfie-, please be cognizant of the dates of the postings. To reawaken a nearly three week old (previously hourly updated) thread, when much has happened in the interim, calls for care. And it's better to ignore provocative remarks, rather than answer them in kind. I forget this at times. Correction: Tothwolf - IRWolfie is "not claiming that there have been thousands". All: I think MBBrutman is now calmly aware of my (our?) position that his client only lacks a review in a close-enough-to-RS for inclusion. Finally, I'm a big fan of self-strikethrough for de-escalation. --Lexein (talk) 23:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
That was my thoughts on this too...the above was from three weeks ago and the discussion had kinda moved on. My point was if IRWolfie- has a genuine gripe about IRCjr having been included here, he needed to take it up with the people who were editing and trying to restructure this article at the time, which was myself and Mabdul.

I read the "thousands" part differently: "I am not claiming there are thousands of fully fledged, up to date supported clients but many clients that have been developed for personal use alone" (emphasis mine) Meaning: There have been thousands of IRC clients, but not fully fledged, only bare bones clients developed for personal use. This is still simply not the case, and semantics aside, I got what IRWolfie- meant.

To go a bit further here, why the hell are we arguing anyway? I worked with both Mabdul and Yarcanox on this and many of these articles and IRWolfie- has worked with Yarcanox as well. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:34, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I have been an on-and-off Wiki editor for a few years now - I did not just swoop in to get my favorite IRC client restored to a list from which it was removed. Some people have stated why they don't think IRCjr is "notable" enough for an entry in this comparison, and I don't agree because I think the notability criteria are being applied in an overly restrictive manner.
With this kind of editing it will never be notable enough for an entry. Nobody in a major "reliable source" is going to review a new DOS client, unless SlashDot or Digg decide to get some chuckles out of it. I am not going to start trolling around asking for other people to review it so that I can finally be "notable" enough for inclusion. (The suggestion to get the author of LeetIRC to write a review so that we could, in effect, extend the chain of notability, was laughable.)
Let's skip the lawyering .. there are probably under 10 clients that exist for DOS. IRCjr is the only actively maintained one, and it's the newest one. It's been actively updated for nearly three years now. Other people are writing about it, but you don't consider most things to be reliable sources. The very clear human readable documentation I've posted doesn't count as a reliable source because I wrote it.
Are we protecting readers from something they should not see? Is it costing too much money? Is somebody making money and thus the entry would be considered commercial spam? Is the collective experience of software engineers who remember when IRC was new less useful and reliable than the opinions of people who clearly admit to not knowing much about IRC?
I really don't care anymore - this has gone on long enough. The article is lacking (not just on this one topic) and you alienate the people who can help you and do your readers a disservice with behavior like this. Mbbrutman (talk) 19:06, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey, this is old stuff you're rehashing. Notability per se has been correctly rejected as a reason to exclude a client, but that doesn't remove the need for reliability and verifiability of facts claimed here. It's too bad you find the quite normal and common practice of requesting a review to be laughable. There's nothing wrong with your documentation; it's a perfectly acceptable primary source. That, plus an independent RS would be enough. And as I've said before, patience pays. IRCjr or mTCP needs a review or extended discussion by an author, or on a website, or in a book, which can be, in some way, found to be a reliable source. Stop whinging about it. You're being entirely too impatient about all this. I'll discuss your proffered sources below.

Here are five of the things I've learned while editing Wikipedia and this article in particular: 1) sources can appear in surprising places, 2) they can take a frustratingly long time to appear, 3) sources can become reliable after deep research and discussion (example, see WP:WikiProject IRC/Sources), 4) nothing happens without effort, 5) sour grapes don't help. I've given you the best reasoning, explanations, and encouragement I can, not to stop looking. Now I'm saying, if you don't care, stop lobbing rhetorical grenades. WP:TIGERS. --Lexein (talk) 01:50, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

In your first sentence, what exactly about IRCjr needs "reliability and verifiability of the facts claimed here" that has not been provided? Is there a doubt that it exists? Or that it runs under DOS? Or that it is an IRC client?
What exactly makes a reliable source? Can you be a reliable source? Is it somebody you have personally heard of? Is it any random user who writes about it in a blog? (A few have done that.) Is it somebody who has gone so far as to make a YouTube video demonstrating it? (That's been done by at least two other people so far.) Is it somebody who runs a well known DOS forum and posts it on a list of software they have found useful? (That's been done.) Do the two links that the Open Watcom compiler people put on their Wiki count? Where exactly do you draw the line?
I called this laughable because shilling for a review is distasteful. So the message is that if I astroturf and solicit a review, then it might gain that reliable source that it needs so badly, and be included. Doesn't that seem wrong? Exactly how reliable is this if people are told to "get a reliable source?"
In the time we've been debating this you could have easily downloaded the VirtualBox appliance (link above) and seen it in emulated action on your machine of choice. But instead of doing what is right for the article, you are trying to explain to me the purity of the system and why I should shill for a review. Fundamentally I fail to see how "reliable sources" can be used as a criteria for inclusion or exclusion. The presence (or absence) of a reliable source doesn't change the facts. The way that criteria is being used here it is just an excuse not to do any verification yourself.
So it boils down to this .. nobody here is allowed to verify the facts themselves and we are supposed to go to other "reliable" sources to do that. Even though those other reliable sources might be solicited, out of date, or inaccurate. And nobody would be the wiser because for some reason, you can cut and paste what you read elsewhere but you are not allowed to do the verification yourself.
That is nuts ... Mbbrutman (talk) 04:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, we can verify IRCjr exists, but generally 3rd party sources are preferred for verification. I feel kinda stuck in the middle here because Mbbrutman has a point and Lexein has a point.

Mbbrutman, what you are asking about is covered in Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources. No, the system isn't perfect. Yes, we have too many confusing rules, policies, and guidelines. Yes, they sometimes get in the way of improving Wikipedia (with seemingly increasing frequency). Somehow we need to improve the system. --Tothwolf (talk) 06:01, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Yikes, Mbbrutman. Astroturfing? Purity? Please. I can, and sometimes do verify software myself. But this encyclopedia isn't built on original research, but the research of others, writing in reliable publications (and some primary sources). Encyclopedias are by nature conservative: see WP:TRUTH. For the extreme long-view perspective on this conservatism, read WP:FLAT. And yes, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS Watcom_C/C++_compiler isn't sourced well enough yet, but it's easily rehabilitated, as I have tagged. I revisited your proffered refs below, found one more, and requested opinion on reliability/notability of those sources. --Lexein (talk) 09:00, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Lexein, soliciting a review to gain a notable source purely for the purpose of getting included in Wikipedia sure smells like shilling/astroturfing to me. And that is exactly what was suggested.
Re:Open Watcom. Well, that kind of floored me - OpenWatcom isn't well enough sourced? I just looked at that article and shook my head. That speaks for itself.
So I think I have it correct up above - if some other "reliable" source writes about it then the editors here feel free to regurgitate that. But in the absence of that reliable source editors of an article would rather argue notability and reliable sources rather that just do the tiniest amount of research to put something in a comparison article. So the article remains knowingly incomplete. Mbbrutman (talk) 12:53, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Reread WP:TIGERS. I never said "purely" - stop misrepresenting, and stop attacking editors, in this case, me. I assumed you wanted your product reviewed anyways - if not, fine. If you choose to cast my attempt to help you in a negative light, that's on you. The Watcom article is patently obviously not sufficiently independently sourced, not with 100% primary sources. Wait a minute, have you actually read the reliable sources policy, or do you simply refuse to believe that it's real, and serious?
  • Would you prefer that the Morgan Stanley article come entirely from Morgan Stanley press releases? Would you object to some Congressional hearing transcripts, and some investigative journalism being cited?
  • Would you prefer that the Microsoft article be based entirely on its website and no other?
There's a Wikipedia way, grounded in the WP:Five pillars which takes a while to get used to. It's an encyclopedia which has a goal of being reliable and trustworthy. Nobody would "rather argue notability" - we discuss to avoid WP:Revert wars and other really WP:UNCIVIL stuff, and to reach consensus while resolving difficult situations. It's clear that you're not reading that that is what's going on here - too bad. As for "do the right thing", I've already researched two previously unreliable sources and established their reliability with help from Tothwolf and WP:RSN. What have you done? As for "tiniest bit of research", per WP:BURDEN, it's on you, the adding editor, though as I've repeatedly stated, I support its full reading, which includes trying to find sources myself, as I have tried to do. As already noted below, I already revisited the sources you offered, and sought Tothwolf's opinion about their use, and found another source as well. What have you done? The word "regurgitate" is incorrect: both independent sources and primary sources are used to support claims, whether quoted or paraphrased. The words "knowingly incomplete" are false - an article is only complete when its contents are reliably sourced in aggregate (and I don't mean every word, duh). In sum, your flame above is deeply disrespectful and full of falsehoods. If that's the only way you're going to interact with editors here, then I strongly suggest you apply one of the WP:Dispute resolution steps. --Lexein (talk) 14:17, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


Thanks for the lecture on Wikipedia - I'm quite familiar with how it works.
The bottom line is that this client (and others) were removed for notability reasons during a mass purge; notability has turned out to be a bogus criteria. That should have never happened. I have been trying for a month to point out the flaws in continuing to exclude it. Apparently we are down to reliable sources (after taking forever to get past the notability argument.) We are not arguing facts at this point - we are just arguing policy. I am not going to get reliable sources unless I start actively soliciting people to write about it, and that is something I see as gaming the system. (Yes, I do believe in the integrity of the system, hence the resistance to soliciting for reviews.) So at this point there really is no path to get the client included. That seems to be a loss for the article; by the omission the article implies that there is only one DOS client, and depending on the day sometimes there are no DOS clients.
The policy puts a lot of the clients on the fringe at a significant disadvantage. The article should be renamed "Comparison of Well Known Internet Clients" if you want to be accurate.
Even worse, if something like Open Watcom is suffering from not having enough reliable sources, then there is no point in bothering with IRC clients. Wiki has a more pervasive problem when the Open Watcom article is being flagged as not having enough reliable sources. Mbbrutman (talk) 23:57, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Already agreed that notability-based deletion was wrong, due to misunderstood policy and guideline. I disagree that there "is no path" to getting IRCjr included: keep an eye out for (potentially rehabilitatable) sources. Examples: see WP:WikiProject IRC/Sources and Talk.
In general I agree about gaming the system where there's bad intent, but here, there is none: it's absolutely no different than sending a book to a magazine for review. You can't predict the outcome.
Watcom/OpenWatcom has been discussed at length in tech press and books throughout its entire long history; there's just no excuse for some of those sources not to be cited in the article. Just as it was a poor choice to cite a wiki as a primary source (facepalm). --Lexein (talk) 02:03, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Article blanking and "sources"

"SchmuckyTheCat" has claimed no sources exist for ii, [30] [31] however this seems to be far from the case. No one appears to be disputing that ii is a FIFO filesystem based client and is currently at version 1.6, released January 31, 2011. "SchmuckyTheCat" however removed this reference [32] and blanked this material from the article, while calling it "unsourced". In addition, we also have an irc-junkie.org review for ii, [33] which irc-junkie.org reviews have previously been found to be reliable and sufficient per WP:N and AfD.

Now, for the purposes of transparency, the reason "SchmuckyTheCat" has suddenly taken an unusual interest in my edits both here with this article and elsewhere on Wikipedia is due to past off-wiki, non-Wikipedia issues related to his trolling. He has specifically targeted material I added/restored [34] [35] or discussed on the talk page. He has also been repeatedly reverted for these type of blankings [36] [37] [38] [39] (which initially could be considered per WP:BRD), however these are in addition to this type of thing [40] which is also disruptive given this information [41] which he knew was right here on the talk page. Importing off-wiki disputes is a violation of WP:HARASS/WP:NPA and if this behaviour continues I'll make a noticeboard posting to get this dealt with quickly. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:44, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

(And this is why I asked for multiple good-quality independent RS. So we wouldn't have entries where the only independent RS is a review in a IRC website).
Say, since this article is supposed to compare clients, why not put a brief mention in a separate section called "Unusual IRC clients"? Instead of having a full-fledge entry in the tables, keeping it only to the aspects that make it substantially different. Idem for "only DOS client in maintenance", "only Amiga IRC in xxxyyy", etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
(irc-junkie.org does have a proven trackrecord, has editorial oversight, and is a "good-quality" source.)

Wouldn't us classifying some clients in an "Unusual IRC clients" section begin to run afoul of WP:OR? What purpose would it serve to remove all the other information anyway? This really would be something more for the Internet Relay Chat article or a Internet Relay Chat clients spinout (both of which I'm actually already working on). I wouldn't be opposed to restoring/add some footnotes which mention something like ii being "different" from other clients which use a CLI or GUI because of it using a FIFO filesystem for its user interface. --Tothwolf (talk) 16:57, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

About OR, the review says that it's unusual and different (or implies it very strongly). And yes, it would also be good for those articles. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Deleting the unsourced clients seems to be the only way they get acted on to add sources. If that is the case, I don't care if I'm reverted, as long as the reversion comes with sources.
suckless and ircjunkies are not RS. They are user-generated blogs/wikis.
I'm trying not to communicate with you, because you seem to think this is a personal issue and gripe about it repeatedly. I simply don't care about some LiveJournal conversation from several years ago that I don't even remember. Stop bringing it up and focus on content right HERE. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
No, irc-junkie is an IRC news site written by an expert in the field which has been discussed previously and found to be a reliable source. The other site is the ii client's own website and is fine for the release date and background info per WP:SELFPUB.

As for communicating...that much is true, you aren't communicating, you are trolling. I've already sent some stuff to ArbCom since you tried to use that as an attack vector. You just can't seem to let anything go, ever. Why don't you go back to ED and your PS3?...oh right, you can't, so you are instead trolling here and elsewhere on Wikipedia. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:10, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

the authors are pseudoanonymous, and they give no details on their expertise. This is just a personal blog. Please point us to those discussions, since I made an external link search, and I can only find discussions where they are treated as personal blogs that are not enough to show notability: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/DMDirc, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Enhanced_Programmable_ircII_Client, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Nettalk_(IRC_client), Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/InspIRCd. The only person defending irc-junkie.org as a RS self describes as a "IRC freak" User:Yarcanox (meaning that no people outside the IRC world think that irc-junkie is anything else than a blog). --Enric Naval (talk) 00:46, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Concur with Enrik, I just did the same EL search looking for where irc-junkie was determined to be RS, found a history Tothwolf making the claim repeatedly that it was, but nobody agreeing that it was. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
  • Correction: the main, active author at irc-junkie.org is openly revealed to be Christian Lederer in the impressum and by the linked copyright certifier. This at least slightly improves the reliability of this source - it's not "pseudo-anonymous". As for ii sources:
  • Decently stable(non blog) and self-descriptive(very important to me) primary source.
  • Two descriptive mini-review (blog) independent sources with screenshots:
"ii – A Filesystem-based IRC Client" - Christian Lederer, 13 September 2010.
"Tool of the year: ii (irc it)" - Tobias Schlitt, 27 November 2008.
In this way, in my opinion, it is at least weakly independently sourced. Too weak? Well, it is waaaay better sourced than Orion IRC just by way of comparison. So I am inclined to revert SchmuckyTheCat's deletion, and comment the IRC IT (ii) entry for now, and conform its name. --Lexein (talk) 14:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
(ec) A news site may use a "blog engine" for content aggregation and still be a news site.

Per WP:USERGENERATED (Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources): "Some news outlets host interactive columns they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professionals in the field on which they write and the blog is subject to the news outlet's full editorial control."

This section also contains this statement: "Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications."

Here are some of the books that are using IRC-Junkie as a reliable source:

  • Shelly, Gary B.; Cashman, Thomas J.; Napier, H. Albert; Judd, Philip J. (April 11, 2007). "Real-time Online Communications". Discovering the Internet: Complete Concepts and Techniques (2nd ed.). Cengage Learning. pp. 223–224. ISBN 1-4188-5990-7. You can learn more about IRC clients, networks, and channels at sites such as IRC-Junkie.org, New2chat.com, and IRCHelp.org.
  • Kshetri, Nir (May 19, 2010). "Concluding Comments". The Global Cybercrime Industry: Economic, Institutional and Strategic Perspectives (1st ed.). Springer. p. 159. ISBN 3-642-11521-7. See "Help! I am being DoS'ed" at http://www.irc-junkie.org/content/a-DoS.php {{cite book}}: External link in |quote= (help)
  • Padula, Marco; Reggiori, Amanda (February 4, 2010). "Riferimenti webliografici". Fondamenti di informatica per la progettazione multimediale. Dai linguaggi formali all'inclusione digitale (in Italian). Franco Angeli. p. 182. ISBN 88-464-7893-2. "IRC Junkie - IRC news", http://www.irc-junkie.org/. {{cite book}}: External link in |quote= (help)
  • Pranz, Sebastian (January 27, 2009). "Direkte Schrift-Kommunikation". Theatralität digitaler Medien: Eine wissenssoziologische Betrachtung medialisierten Alltagshandelns (in German) (1st ed.). VS Verlag. p. 128. ISBN 3-531-16243-8. 210 http://www.irc-junkie.org/content/l-cybersexnot.php 16.3.04 {{cite book}}: External link in |quote= (help)
This means IRC-Junkie easily passes Wikipedia's threshold for a reliable source. Oh, and the notability guideline does not apply to a source ("IRC-Junkie isn't notable therefore can't be used as a source!") so don't even try that argument here. While Lexein and I may not agree on everything, IRC-Junkie is also acceptable per Lexein's proposal.

As far as User:Yarcanox goes... He has been instrumental in helping expand and add references to many of these articles, including Internet Relay Chat itself (which before we began quite a number of years ago, was pretty much unreferenced). Enric, you aren't doing yourself any favours at all in attacking Yarcanox's character here. --Tothwolf (talk) 14:18, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Note: we must make a note somewhere local that irc-junkie.org is considered a reliable-enough-for-an-item source about IRC clients, based on these references to it. I suggest WP:Reliable sources noticeboard. --Lexein (talk) 17:28, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Padula included IRC-Junkie in a list of references instead of direct citations, but I thought it would be worth mentioning anyway.

IRC-Junkie focuses on the topic of IRC as a whole, so it isn't limited to just IRC client software. At one time there were a couple of other "IRC news" sites which were similar, but it seems to be the only one of them which is still around.

The best place to build a list of sources would likely be Wikipedia:WikiProject IRC/Sources as has been done previously by WikiProject Video games at WP:VG/S. Other sites such as IRChelp.org (also mentioned in Discovering the Internet above) and IRC.org also tend to be reliable. --Tothwolf (talk) 20:02, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Just reverted the deletion & cited the source, with a "(more)" wikilink to the rationale at WP:WikiProject IRC/Sources, and a hidden comment to that effect.--Lexein (talk) 01:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Addendum: Just had a surprising chat at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#irc-junkie.org. Different conclusion than I expected. Go read it. --Lexein (talk) 16:00, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
There is a little more to the background of irc-junkie.org. It was originally run by Asmo, who sold the site to phrozen77 in August 2008. [42] [43] Posts prior to 9 August 2008 were made by Asmo or another contributor. Some additional background can be found here [44] by way of the Internet Archive. (I had not realized the Internet Archive archived many of the site's older pages, which may turn out to be useful because we can still access them.)

I also found this directory listing www.squidoo.com/irc-websites which lists several "IRC news" related sites. --Tothwolf (talk) 17:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I had noticed the archives and Asmo (but not the sale), but didn't bring it up at RSN so as not to muddy the discussion. I was surprised to see how many articles irc-junkie.org used to have. I'm happy to respect the RSN suggestion to use irc-junkie.org "very carefully as a reliable source for limited claims about irc." --Lexein (talk) 00:17, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
I guess what I was trying to point out is that some of the earlier articles would have had a separate writer and editor. Unfortunately, the material archived by the Internet Archive seems to be somewhat sporadic. Only about half of the news/review links I tried pull up archived versions. I suppose this is still better than nothing, and something I wasn't even aware had been archived. I did notice that the site was updated a lot more frequently in years past, although perhaps some of this is also due to the slow down of the IRC community itself. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:42, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
No, I gotcha - separate editor/writer. The Archive bases what it collects partially on Alexa visit counts (a flawed system), so that explains the missing pages. I think nowadays, people just use IRC because it's a commodity. There's less scripting, less use of IRC per se in botnet command/control, so less controversy to bubble up into the tech news. --Lexein (talk) 05:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Andi Gutmans, Stig Saether Bakken, Derick Rethans (2005) PHP 5 aus erster Hand. Addison Wesley Verlag. p. 662. ISBN: 978-3827322418 (DE). English tr.:"PEAR - License: PHP - By Tobias Schlitt (lead) Net_FTP provides an OO interface to the FTP functions of PHP and some accessories.")
  • Bruno Pedro, Vitor Rodrigues(2007) PHP and Smarty on Large-Scale Web Development. O'Reilly Books Shortcuts. p. 9. ISBN:978-0-596-55771-3 "There are many sources of documentation about installing your own PEAR channel, but we recommend Tobias Schlitt's excellent tutorial, available at his blog, tinyurl.com/2doqj4."
These sources support Schlitt's software expertise, so I'm going to assert that his review of ii is reliable for that reason. --Lexein (talk) 05:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Removal of all MS-DOS IRC clients?

With this edit which removes all mention of leetIRC, are we now to deny that MS-DOS IRC clients exist? Relatively few clients exist for MS-DOS anyway (Charalabidis 1999, pp.250-251). --Tothwolf (talk) 06:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

No. I do not think any deletions are appropriate until all possible sources of sources have been exhausted. There is still active discussion of inclusion criteria and sources; it may take a month or two to settle down to a consensus. Even though I brought up criteria and an RFC, I still say WP:There is no deadline. --Lexein (talk) 10:26, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
This one client already got its share of discussion and review: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/LeetIRC, Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2009_September_29#LeetIRC. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
IRCjr and LeetIRC are very similar. Both are for MS-DOS. Both are self-published pieces of software described on their author's web sites. Both had stand alone articles. One was marked for deletion, and the other moved to this comparison table. Guess which one is in wider use and still gets updated, and which one has not been updated in years? The criteria are being applied inconsistently, and it is based on who is applying them at the moment.
BTW, might as well get rid of the DOS column. There are no IRC clients that run under DOS according to the article, so the column is not needed. Or, we can leave it this way so that people can infer that no such clients exist because Wiki refuses to acknowledge them.
Once again, it doesn't make sense to remove the only maintained and actively developed MS-DOS client. (The last major update was in April.) It's not going to get coverage in PC Magazine or another "reliable source" because of the operating system. So the answer here is that it just doesn't exist? Mbbrutman (talk) 13:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
  • On leetIRC: I've reverted its deletion, based on a primary source and an independent source. The primary is a long term website, by an author who has published several pieces of software, mentioned favorably elsewhere, and who carefully describes in some detail the features(hooray!) of leetIRC. There is also a listing for this software on FreeDOS.org, a persistent, independent source which has been deemed reliable for use in several other articles, and I just noticed that leetIRC is an included package in the FreeDOS distribution. In my opinion, the extant sourceforge link gets a pass as AGF, since it seems to be for project participants only. And there's a better SF link, too. In my opinion, these three sources are sufficient for leetIRC to remain here, but are insufficient for a full article on leetIRC. As I said when I restarted all this kerfuffle, I'm an inclusionist, but also a fan of inclusion criteria. Note also, that I will continue to press for further, improved sources as they become available; they quite often do, in surprising places.
  • As for IRCjr, get it reviewed. Mike Chambers, author of leetIRC, seemed happy when you announced the addition of multiwindows over in the forum on vintage-computing.com. Maybe he'll do a review on his website (please, on the web side, not the wiki or the blog!). These things take time. --Lexein (talk) 03:08, 1 May 2011 (UTC)


Shilling for a review on a personal website kind of ruins the "reliable source" requirement. I'm not going to do that.
LeetIRC appears on the FreeDOS software list and on SourceForge because it was open sourced. I have not open sourced my code yet. So we have an interesting problem; an application which is relatively stale (has not been touched in years) is notable enough for inclusion because it was open source, but an application which has been updated and enhanced several times in the last few years is not.
Even when I open source the code I may not host it on SourceForge, and then I won't get SourceForge as a reliable source to point at. And any open source programmer knows that the barrier to entry for a SourceForge project is low - it's a distribution mechanism, not a vetting system.
Inclusion into the list of software on FreeDOS is a matter of having the right open source license. Once again, my code isn't open source yet, so it can't be formally included in a FreeDOS distribution. Yet the entire mTCP project (of which IRCjr is a part) is discussed fairly often and recommended on the FreeDOS mailing list, and users are rolling their own FreeDOS distributions with mTCP/IRCjr included in it. (http://lazybrowndog.net/freedos/virtualbox/) .
Meanwhile, the rest of the DOS universe is getting the word. The host of the "DOS Isn't Dead" forum has it on his list of recommended DOS software, and that wasn't solicited in any way. ( http://www.bttr-software.de/links/#networking ) The FreeDOS and DRDOS web pages and Wikis have picked up on mTCP/IRCjr and include it in their lists of networking software. It has made it to the "DOS Applications for Internet Use" FAQ at http://www.dendarii.co.uk/FAQs/dos-apps.html which is a well known resource for DOS users, and that was also not solicited. I'm not going to list personal blogs and web forum discussions, but they are out there too.
As much as I like SourceForge, is that a reliable source? It's a delivery mechanism for open source software. I could easy host a ZIP file on my web site and include an open source license, but that wouldn't be considered a reliable source for some reason. And inclusion in FreeDOS (which I would like) is predicated on a product being open source which should not be a criteria.
My intent here isn't to knock LeetIRC off the list - I think it's quite notable for a lot of technical reasons. My intent is to improve the article by being more inclusive, and reminding people that IRC exists on all kinds of platforms and operating systems. Mbbrutman (talk) 14:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
I reverted the deletion not arbitrarily, but only because of the leetIRC author's website (saying things about itself) and the FreeDOS distro website (independent, long term, notable in its own right). I left the already-existing SourceForge link alone and walked away. At the FreeDOS site, there's a real, real-named person who applies editorial oversight to its contents, beyond just reading the license text. What I did had nothing to do with "open source," or sourceforge (the weakest of the three, and really a "gimme", given the other two. In fact, I say, "meh"). What is "fresh" or "stale," is not relevant at Wikipedia in general, or in this list/chart. How well sourced - that matters.
Shilling? Nah. Requesting a review is hardly inappropriate; it's done quite frequently.
"notable for technical reasons" is not the same as Wikipedia notability, right?
Improving Wikipedia articles means, among other things, according to us Wikipedia editors, adding content which is reliably, verifiably sourced clearly and unambiguously. Challenges abound, of course, leading to Talk.
--Lexein (talk) 08:21, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Revisiting IRCjr/mTCP. The sources Mbbrutman listed as supporting IRCjr are lists, not discussions or reviews. Further, they list the mTCP stack or suite, not the IRCjr IRC client application. I used FreeDOS because it explicitly listed the LeetIRC IRC client.

Are these sites as stable/notable/reliable as FreeDOS? Tothwolf? If so, do they support this IRC client? Since the primary lists IRCjr as a part of mTCP, maybe.
Here's a review of mTCP which finds its FTP performance very good, and lists, but doesn't review IRCjr. Is this site, or Spiegle, a reliable source? Dunno.

  • mTCP review. 2007. Ulrich Hansen, Mainz (Germany), modified 2010 by W.Spiegl. This is Wilhelm Spiegl, as listed in the imprint.

--Lexein (talk) 02:50, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm really not familiar with those sites or FAQs. http://lazybrowndog.net/freedos/ appears to have also moved to http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Networking_FreeDOS Unfortunately, even though I can tell that mTCP has users just from a simple Google search, it looks like it is still too new (2009) for there to be enough sources for it to pass Wikipedia's notability guideline. If we had an article for mTCP, we could have a subsection there for IRCjr, but I don't think it would pass AfD at this point.

Somehow we need a way to be able to cover stuff like this on Wikipedia. The system has flaws, which is something even the WMF is aware of [45] [46] but I'm not sure how to fix it. Heck, we don't even have articles for Trumpet Winsock for Windows 3.x or Trumpet TCP/IP for DOS [47] (both from Peter Tattam), although these would pass Wikipedia's notability guideline. There was also an IRC client for the DOS Trumpet TCP/IP called Trumpet IRC. [48] [49] [50] --Tothwolf (talk) 05:28, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Yup. While I'm confident mTCP/IRCjr will be N reliably sourced in time, I'm curious about a toehold reliable-enough ref (a la LeetIRC) for it in this article for now. It is pretty new. You're certainly right about the Winsock and Trumpet N - I had forgotten about them. And as for sourcing some of the until-now-unsourced(or solely primary-sourced) clients, we now have a path, based on the RSN result. This took a while to get to, and was new to me, but I like it. I've written it up at Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject IRC/Sources (talk). --Lexein (talk) 10:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I've not been able to locate much in the way of third party sources for mTCP or IRCjr. I did see a few YouTube videos but we can't use those. If IRC-Junkie were to review IRCjr, that would make things easy for us. Another possibility would be a round-up review which covers as many DOS IRC clients as possible (both old and modern). We used some of these types of reviews for some of the Emacs IRC clients such as ERC and rcirc [51] [52] (both of these reviews were found to be reliable at AfD and probably should also be noted at Wikipedia:WikiProject IRC/Sources with the information from the AfDs). We could probably support articles for both Circe [53] and ZenIRC [54] too (both are popular and included with many Linux and BSD distributions), but I just don't see a reason to create articles for them right now because they would just be small stubs like ERC.

The article we had for IRCjr was also very small and I had it userfied as User:Tothwolf/IRCjr. I would actually like to include coverage of many more DOS clients, but finding sources for all of them tends to be difficult (even just locating copies of some of them is not easy). The irc.org archive contains quite a few of the older DOS clients, but it looks like it is missing others. I've still been unable to locate a copy of DOSIRC, which was the DOS equivalent of WinIRC for Windows 3.1. WinIRC [55] of course was the client which spurred mIRC's development. I think coverage of Trumpet IRC could probably be added to a section of an article about Trumpet TCP/IP, which also would give us something to redirect to. I don't think Trumpet IRC would support a standalone article though. Other than the glossary idea which was discussed a few years ago, the only other thing I can think of is to have a section for DOS IRC clients in a future Internet Relay Chat clients spinout article. Maybe we could do something similar for the Emacs IRC clients.

[Since you mentioned leetIRC, I hadn't even realized the first table was out of sync with the others and is missing entries. This appears to be due to the blanking which took place but it is already corrected in my working copy.] --Tothwolf (talk) 23:01, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

mIRC & Wine

On 26 April 2011 SchmuckyTheCat removed the footnote for the mIRC entry that indicated the program would run under Wine with the reason "confirmed by who?" [56] A quick Google search turned up a large number of references for this, so yet again this removal seems to be disruptive to the improvement of this article. I cut the results down to 4 which seem to be worth keeping. I'm including these in the draft of this article I have in-progress and they should probably be included in the mIRC article as well.

--Tothwolf (talk) 23:28, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Schmucky's edit was disruptive: the removed content was not encyclopaedic particularly in terms of phrasing. The " — Confirmed" makes it sound like OR, even though those sources show it isn't. Also, perhaps at least one of those sources needs to be cited in the article; as it stands it still leaves the reader wondering "confirmed by whom exactly?". Moreover the way that information is 'tacked on' the end after the table isn't really suited to a Comparison article. Perhaps one of the OS tables should have a 'WINE' column, though I'm not sure whether it should go on the Windows table (treating WINE as an implementation of Windows) or the Unix table (because WINE runs under Unices). PT 13:32, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree it should be phrased differently, see above where I said "I'm including these in the draft of this article I have in-progress and they should probably be included in the mIRC article as well."? I've already taken care of it in my draft copy while reworking and restoring lost footnotes. And yes, SchmuckyTheCat was being disruptive, see this AN/I discussion for details as to why and what his motives were. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:56, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
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