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. But I'll admit that Quantity of nonreliable sources can, in extreme cases, make up for a shortage in RS is an AFD argument I haven't encountered before. If this is actually written down in poilcy anywhere, you might have a short of reversal of this closure at Wikipedia:Deletion review. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:25, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Write-only language[edit]

Write-only language (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Witticism of no independent notability. Wikipedia is not the Jargon File (which has been used as a reference here despite being one of the most notoriously unreliable sources on the Internet.) The only source which isn't either user-generated or by definition unreliable is for the APL Game of Life paragraph, which is already adequately covered elsewhere. (the reference to The Craft of Text Editing is simply wrong; that source uses the term in a completely different way.) Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 17:11, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 17:11, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I'm in two minds about this, because although in general I agree that Wikipedia should not be a repository of jargon, this is a term that people are quite likely to look up. One could even call it an important concept in programming, especially for those of us who detest C/C++. Athel cb (talk) 18:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Athel cb. Quantity of nonreliable sources can, in extreme cases, make up for a shortage in RS. Owen× ☎ 19:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• This dates from the time when people really did import the Jargon File uncritically into articles. Our standards are far higher now. Indeed, they were far higher then. I remember a few repeating-the-Jargon-File articles being deleted, or completely rewritten using far more accurate sources, back around the middle 2000s. This is not a real properly documented concept in computing. You won't find anything other than computer humour lists with this. No-one truly regards languages as "write only" and seriously discusses them as such.

  This is unverifiable from reliable sources, because in the world outside of jokes it isn't true. And it isn't properly documented standalone as a joke. At best, there are reliable sources that give 1 sentence to saying that APL, specifically, is jokingly called this, by "wags" and putting "write-only language" in quotation marks. (Torben Ægidius Mogensen's 2022 Programming Language Design and Implementation says "jokingly" and uses quotation marks, Kent's and Williams's 1989 Encyclopedia of Microcomputers has "wags".)

  That's at best 1 sentence in APL (programming language), and a not particularly good one at that. (The stuff that grew in the article at hand around 2011 about something else was rightly challenged and removed in 2019 for being a joke on "blogs and wikis", as is discussed on the talk page.) I notice that our APL (programming language) article proceeds to present an unsourced serious counterargument to what is only a joke assertion in the first place according to these reliable sources. Ironically, editors trying to seriously correct what is a joke is even in the edit history of the article at hand. The very first version in 2004 tried to seriously counterargue the joke and point out that it wasn't really the case.

  The best that you'll get for other computer languages is publicity blurbs on book jackets and letters to the editor in amateur computer magazines. No, Bjarne Stroustrup doesn't actually seriously discuss this as a concept either, despite what Google Books string matches might tell you. This is an encyclopaedia, not yet another computer humour book. People can look up stuff that is wrong; that doesn't mean that we should have badly sourced wrong stuff, that people have been pointing out is wrong since the inception of the article in 2004, solely in order to satisfy them. Delete.

  Uncle G (talk) 04:15, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 03:33, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per Uncle G. Interesting as a literal example of citogenesis. Source 4[1] cites this article(!) for it's definition of write-only language. I couldn't see any reliable sources in a quick google search and CS sources are usually readily available via google.

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.