Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bitcoin Improvement Proposal

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:11, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal

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This is not written like an encyclopedia article. It only has primary sources. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 15:15, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 15:15, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This article would need to be completely rewritten in order to conform to Wikipedia standards, however it does not appear that the necessary reliable sources exist to do that. In its current state, the only option is to delete. --Puzzledvegetable^{Is it teatime already?} 17:00, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Puzzledvegetable: I just added some non-primary sources. Your point is now moot and invalid. --187.178.163.96 (talk) 20:46, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You added crypto sites. We need coverage in Reliable Sources - such as mainstream press coverage, or peer-reviewed academic coverage - David Gerard (talk) 21:27, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@David Gerard:. How do I identify peer-reviewed academic coverage? Are any of the sources I just added peer-reviewed? Like for example, Google claims the paper Atomic Cross-Chain Swaps has been cited 108 times. Is it peer reviewed? --187.178.163.96 (talk) 21:56, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - no evidence of RS coverage. Possible redirect to Bitcoin - David Gerard (talk) 21:27, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@David Gerard:. Wouldn't it be better just to move it back to Bitcoin Core since that is where I moved it from? Links and bookmarks from other internet pages would be less likely to be broken that way, don't you think? --187.178.163.96 (talk) 21:58, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Bitcoin or Bitcoin Core Agree with norm / other Wikipedians, at this moment I don't think BIP has gain notability beyond groups within Bitcoin / Crypto society. The information on the current article may be useful complement to BitCoin so I suggest merge with Bitcoin or Bitcoin Core and do a redirect. (Honestly while I am very familiar and has a strong interest in cryto, I don't know if Bitcoin Core as a software meets GNG either, I doubt other Wikipedians will consider it as notable.) xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 22:47, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Xinbenlv:. Ok, I have nominated Bitcoin Core for deletion as you suggested. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bitcoin Core. --Ysangkok (talk) 00:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ysangkok: the Bitcoin Core nomination is not useful. Merging this BIP content into Bitcoin core would make sense. You should check Bitcoin Core for GNG prior to nomination, it has widespread coverage in mainstream press (NYT, WSJ, Fortune, NYT, New Yorker, etc). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 10:59, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This should not be merged into Bitcoin Core, the BIPs process is not part of Bitcoin Core, it's a separate community run effort. (In fact, I believe by the numbers Bitcoin core doesn't even implement a majority of the specified BIPs). I don't think merging is appropriate: the article is mostly minutia. If there are some good citations for high profile/important BIPs they could be moved to Bitcoin but otherwise I don't see what should be merged. --Gmaxwell (talk) 11:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gmaxwell: who will decide whether there are good citations, and when will they decide? --Ysangkok (talk) 18:26, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The general notability guidelines are not met. The newly-added sources may be independent and reliable, but as far as I can tell, they fail to significantly cover the topic of BIPs. Each source discusses a specific new feature of Bitcoin, only discussing the BIP process in passing. BenKuykendall (talk) 23:28, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@BenKuykendall:, what makes you think it has to pass under GNG? It is a niche article. Besides, the GNG notes that "Notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles or lists". This article is a list. --187.178.163.96 (talk) 00:03, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@187.178.163.96: it is not clear that this is a list -- a list would be titled something like List of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals and would need unambiguous inclusion criteria (listing selected BIPs is not sufficient). Regardless, a list must pass equivalent notability standards. To quote WP:LISTN: the list topic must be discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources. To echo my comment above: the present sources discuss individual BIPs, not the group or set of BIPs as a whole. BenKuykendall (talk) 02:54, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete / smerge to Bitcoin. Everything has to pass GNG. All other inclusion guidelines are just indications of what is likely to pass GNG because GNG is based on core policy. Guy (help!) 00:46, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or Merge with Bitcoin (well, parts of it). Isn't of free-standing interest outside of Bitcoin. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:10, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ladislav Mecir:, you said at Talk:Bitcoin_scalability_problem#Article_necessary? that the Bitcoin article was too big. Does this mean you disagree with merging more content into it? --Ysangkok (talk) 18:57, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Merge, not Delete I support merging this into the main Bitcoin article. The information is important enough for the development of Bitcoin and has several references and citations that could be kept with some cleanup. --Molochmeditates (talk) 03:57, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Molochmeditates: which references do you think should be kept? The articles by Aaron van Wirdum, are they good enough? What about the journal articles, are they primary sources or not? Which papers are peer reviewed, which are not? I think nobody will do anything, and everything will be deleted. How are you going to merge anything after the article is gone? --Ysangkok (talk) 18:24, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In the event of a merge outcome, the closer simply redirects. The edit history is still visible, and so the old contents are available for editors to incorporrate into the target. As Ladislav Mecir notes and in keeping with WP:SUMMARY, though, we should not merge this article with the overlong parent article: if we want to merge we should find another target. — Charles Stewart (talk) 09:48, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Ysangkok (talk) 18:01, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Ysangkok (talk) 18:02, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do not merge with Bitcoin. The Bitcoin article was marked as too long and split to subpages such as History of bitcoin, Economics of bitcoin, etc. After those splits, the prose size of the Bitcoin article is 48,273 characters at present. Seeing proposals to merge several articles into it including this one, I am afraid that the prose would become unreadable. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, fails WP:GNG. Widefox; talk 12:49, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ysangkok (talk) 17:43, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Question - Are there any notable Bitcoin implementations that make use of the BIP process other than Bitcoin Core? — Charles Stewart (talk) 18:35, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Chalst: yes, Drivechain implements BIP-300 and BIP-301. BIP-158 has been supported in btcd for a long time, and is still not supported in Bitcoin Core. BIP-37 specifies a feature removed from Core but still available in Bitcoin forks. Electrum still implements BIP-70. Bitcoin forks still implement BIP-61. --Ysangkok (talk) 19:20, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, "not written like an encyclopedia article" is not a valid deletion rationale, it is a motivation to improve the article. The claim about only citing primary sources is now invalid since journal references were added. Given that the article explains the scientific foundations of Bitcoin, it is hard to find sources given that they are drowned out by politics. But we are not deleting obscure physics articles and given that these topics have the attention of academics is enough to keep them, for the same reason we keep a physics article. I know we have a strict restrictions of cryptocurrencies, but this article is so technical that it is effectively removed from the currency aspect of these distributed ledgers, and we can see as merely a list of technical foundations of distributed ledgers. Note that I am 187.178.163.96. --Ysangkok (talk) 19:47, 6 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Most of the scholarly refrences are in the proceedings of one conferences proceeding, whose most recent CfP is https://fc20.ifca.ai/cfp.html - generally conference peer review is more cursory than journal peer review and the program committee for this conference is so large that I am doubtful that the committee is very consistent. I think these sources are usable, since the papers can be reacted to, and they have some value for documenting the interest of the BIP process, but they should be treated with a bit of caution. — Charles Stewart (talk) 09:48, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ysangkok (talk) 00:18, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The new journal references do not appear to actually discuss BIPs, but rather seem to be proposals for restructuring bitcoin in some significant way. We would need secondary sources that actually describe BIPs and the BIP process. Still fails WP:GNG – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 00:27, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.