Bitcoin (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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No notable third-party coverage. Q ^{T C} 06:23, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep One of Wikipedia's great strengths is its leading-edge coverage of computing developments, greatly outpacing print media. Whilst it is fair to say that Bitcoin and a small number of similar systems presently have unimpressive numbers of users and are not widely known, they are an important innovation that will be discussed within academic literature as well as certain computing / cryptographic spheres. I think the proposal to delete this article misses the significance of this realm of computing which, admittedly frontier at present, is definitely of value for Wikipedia. prat (talk) 09:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC), computing professional, long term wikipedian and elected English wikipedia administrator[reply]
  • "will be" discussed in the literature … "not widely known" — In other words not yet a part of the general corpus of human knowledge and not yet documented. You've just made good arguments to support a case for deletion, per our Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research policies. Uncle G (talk) 14:51, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • What is 'the general corpus of human knowledge'? In my opinion that's a ridiculous notion to put forward, as most humans know nothing about most things. Fundamentally, since there are real services accepting Bitcoin as payment, it's obviously a real system that deserves reference.prat (talk) 12:14, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The project can be verified to exist, everything else is original research. How is a wikipedia article that is a copy of the original website useful? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.236.35.117 (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Just for the record, Bitcoin has made the Slashdot frontpage recently: [1]. 91.32.175.1 (talk) 14:29, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:21, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Wait and hold on for a little while. I figured that the deletionists would get ahold of this article sooner or later, and in fact considering the attention it got on Slashdot it surprised me that it took this long. The article has certainly improved substantially since it got the Slashdot coverage, but the issue with notability is something that can be argued per the usual guidelines. For myself, I think the verifiability argument can be thrown out the window as all of the claims made in the article can be verified independently. The original research guideline is a bit trickier and may be more problematic. The same thing that keeps UFO researchers from posting wild theories does keep this from being accepted too, on the same grounds. I think that it will become something much more notable, but that hasn't happened yet and this is bleeding edge stuff. I guess the race is on now to see if anybody else in the next week might publish something, or a hard search to see if there might be some bona fide 3rd party sources of information that are discussing this topic (beyond blogs or other such stuff). --Robert Horning (talk) 17:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'See Uncle G's comments above. The first version came out a a year and a half ago and there still isn't any reliable third party coverage, I wouldn't call that bleeding edge. Q ^{T C} 23:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Doing a Google search came up with several third party commentaries and reviews of the project, but I'll admit that the quality of those sources may seem a bit lacking as they are mostly blog entries. That gets real fuzzy on what is a reliable source. Some of the sources may be considered "reliable" but that is a matter of opinion on the topic. I've also seen where some topics like this will get a commentary like "delete for now, but undelete or rewrite when reliable 3rd party sources are written". Yes, I get that too. Bleeding edge is a relative term anyway and this is all subjective. As per the strictly technical term of two or more 3rd party sources, that can indeed be found for this article. The rest is weighing if those sources are sufficient or merely the blogosphere talking to itself at the moment. They are, however, 3rd party commentaries that are not coming from the creator of the software and that indicates at least a certain level of notability. Now if that is sufficient for the current quality requirements of Wikipedia is where the question lies. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:22, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - This smells like an ad. Needs a rewrite if kept... Carrite (talk) 19:17, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Wikipedia is not for publishing "bleeding edge" original thought, or to promote your new software concept or business model. Even computing topics need to show long term historical notability and historical, technical, or cultural significance. Every reference is either internal or trivial. The article is also advertising, and focuses exclusively on the features this product offers and its alleged advantages. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 14:34, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Electronic cash systems are a perfectly valid topic and cross-references to existing implementations allow Wikipedia depth without extending the core article to undue length. This one may need extensive work as an article, but deletion is a bad solution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cb6 (talk • contribs) 12:36, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, with all due respect, I do not think that's really relevant, as the fundamental problem is lack of significant coverage in reliable sources. I can find no such coverage. --Nuujinn (talk) 21:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - Here is one "credible" 3rd party source that I think would be indisputable: http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/open-source-innovation-the-cutting-edge-582?page=0,2

As to if at least one more credible source could be found.... that is debatable. I do think this does refute the original proposal for deletion that "no credible sources can be found", although I'll admit that just one source is quite weak. --Robert Horning (talk) 19:02, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. At least 18 independent third-party businesses accept bitcoins as payment. Every single one should be considered notable third-party coverage. It's easy and risk free to review some random program on the Internet, but these companies have put their money where their mouth is. Here are 15 companies and here are 3 exchanges. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.70.24.100 (talk) 03:19, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. The sources citing Bitcoin may not be the most authoritative, but I think we should WP:Ignore all rules in this case. Why? Because Bitcoin is a unique innovation in that it's a) an electonic cryptocurrency b) anonymous/pseudonymous and c) fully distributed and doesn't need a central authority to function. The theory of such currencies has been discussed in academic literature for years but Bitcoin is the first working implementation that fulfils all criteria above. And to my knowledge, it is currently the only working implementation in the world. Those two facts make it notable enough in my opinion, and Bitcoin's inclusion in Wikipedia improves the educational value of the Electronic money article. --American Antics (talk) 10:28, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. It's hard to get third-party sources for niche software like this. News organizations aren't interested. See, for example: I2P, Entropy, GNUnet, Nodezilla, OneSwarm, and OFFSystem. None of those have a single third-party source. Theymos (talk) 19:39, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Please. I came here for information and was delighted to find it. That information is both important and verifiable. Deletion is like the death penalty - not corrective at all. If you don't like the content then improve it, but please don't edit it down to zero. Dizm (talk) 22:41, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment, please have a go yourself and see if you can find some coverage in reliable sources. If I had found any when I searched, I would have added them. Also, Theymos, the state of other articles isn't relevant to this discussion, other stuff exists. --Nuujinn (talk) 23:44, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that noting other articles which have shaky references is only giving fodder to get those other articles nominated for deletion instead of trying to fix the problems with this article. It is a failed argument. Still, are sources like this one (which clearly is 3rd party) reliable? That fits source #2 for strict notability requirements and something that I've seen in previous deletion discussions be sufficient to save the article. That this is a blog may be true, but is this an expert in the subject area? That is certainly something up for discussion. I've made my attempts at finding reliable sources that aren't blogs, but there isn't much. OK, I just found something else: This article in the Hartford Advocate. Stuff is out there, but it does take some digging. It is not exactly true that there is no coverage in "reliable sources". --Robert Horning (talk) 01:05, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as per American Antics' comment. Also, Nmap recently added signatures for Bitcoin -- not sure if that counts as significant. Disclosure: I'm a contributor to the project. — DataWraith (talk) 10:07, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• A list of further outside sources can be found on the Bitcoin forum: [2]. — DataWraith (talk) 10:22, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Ok, it looks like there may be enough, I'll take a look later to see what I think of the quality, but you all should be aware that posting a note to a forum like that to attract attention is verboten, see Wikipedia:Canvassing, since it attracts folks with similar points of view. As editors here we are supposed to be neutral. Contributors to the project need to be very careful regarding conflicts of interest, and how wonderful the software is has nothing to do with it's notability. --Nuujinn (talk) 11:44, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, T. Canens (talk) 01:26, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Relisting comment: A list of sources was posted late in the discussion, so further discussion seems warranted; I should mention that I find most of the keeps above to be exceedingly weak at best. T. Canens (talk) 01:27, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. All but one of the new sources are either primary, blogs, or trivial mentions, not enough to establish notability. Sorry, but now is not the right time for an article on this. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 02:51, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]