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 no consensus to delete; default to KEEP. - Philippe | Talk 04:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Complex.h[edit]

Complex.h (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Another editor has raised copyright concerns, but my reason for nomination is that this is material for a C++ programmer's reference manual, not for an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is not a manual or textbook, and it is not an indiscriminate collection of information. PROD removed without comment by the author. JohnCD (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per one, some or all of the reasons above :-) TreasuryTag talkcontribs 19:59, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. Newbie doesn't know this is an encyclopedia. Dicklyon (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Copyright doesn't apply to a list of function names, particularly given that they're part of the C standard library. We've got articles for most of the other C standard library headers (see ((C Standard library))); although this isn't a very good article right now, keeping the set complete is valuable. Zetawoof_(ζ) 22:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, as per Zetawoof, this is part of a set of articles. Rich257 (talk) 22:24, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep needs help, but certainly encyclopedic. 68.40.58.255 (talk) 00:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I agree with nom that this is material for a reference manual. "WP:NOT#MANUAL" says that wikipedia is not an instruction manual. To me, a lot of Wikipedia is not so much an encyclopedia as a whole set of interlinked specialist encyclopedias. The distinction between a specialist encyclopedia and a reference book is often less clear. I'm not sure whether this material is better here or on Wikibooks, but at present the distinction seems to be that Wikibooks contains the instruction manual and tutorials, while Wikipedia contains the reference manual. That doesn't seem unreasonable and I don't see any strong reason to transwiki this whole series of articles, which would be a lot of work and would certainly be too major a change to decide here. Qwfp (talk) 21:19, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I question how useful it is to copy into Wikipedia, for the sake of completeness, information which is available from the source only one click away - this case here. For one thing, what if there are changes to the original? Unless whoever copies it in is willing to take ongoing responsibility for future updates, there is a danger that WP will be left with out-of-date information. Better, in my view, just to have a pointer or link to the source. JohnCD (talk) 16:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The C standard library is a widely accepted standard, and will not undergo any significant changes without ample notice - I'd be shocked if anything were changed with less than a year's warning. Keeping this up to date is honestly not going to be a problem. Zetawoof_(ζ) 23:14, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. This is more appropriate in Wikibooks. Axl (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep I can see no copyright violation, but detailing any specific library API normally would be out of the scope of Wikipedia. However, the C standard library is more than just another library, so I think articles on the single parts are ok. A mere list of all contained functions does seem out of place though - that indeed is only useful as reference material. In an encyclopedic article I'd rather read something on why complex.h was included in the standard (are complex numbers useful for something?), where it is used (like.. does my car or cellphone likely use this?), what it was based on (some history always is encyclopedic I think..), which implementations exists, differences between them, and so on, basically all the notable encyclopedic information available. I'm quite sure such information does exist in this particular case (could be proven otherwise though) - the current article is at best a stub though therefore my keep vote is quite weak. --Allefant (talk) 14:08, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep We need proof that it is a copyvio, and this standard library article is pretty helpful. STYROFOAM1994^Talk 00:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Just a directory listing of function signatues in a C library header file. This is definite wikibooks material, not encyclopedic. Quale (talk) 19:22, 6 March 2008 (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.