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 Keep. Michig (talk) 07:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Napier88[edit]

Napier88 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Hopeless NN stub. (Thanks to the bot+Padenton, one of my twenty open "AFD step III" tabs finally indicated success in the form of an edit conflict, so far for mobile broadband at modem speed.) –Be..anyone (talk) 20:24, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. ― Padenton|✉   20:50, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. ― Padenton|✉   20:50, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As to non-notability (such an easy nomination), then that appears to be on the basis that "Anything pre-dating the Web didn't happen". Looking at academic sources from 2000 and earlier, Napier88 garnered plenty of serious discussion, well above WP:N. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:57, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to convert one of the "plenty of serious discussion" into a reference, all I see is an unsourced dead language with one author. I stumbled over it in a contested PROD without ((old prod full)) in the last step of a new PROD, and the whole "easy nomination" took me about an hour. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:14, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Then your google-fu is weak. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Andy Dingley: Then, young grasshopper, show us how it's done and expand the article or post the sources that you found so someone else can. Your keep vote without providing any policy rationale or even providing any evidence to suggest the subject's notability, is just as useless as what you're criticizing. ― Padenton|✉   19:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It is mentioned in passing in this 1995 thesis paper (Chapter 11). I would personally tend towards keep. Ceannlann gorm (talk) 22:27, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's mentioned in a vast range of academic work from Scotland. As for a number of other languages strongly associated with particular institutions (from Scheme at MIT right back to BCPL at Cambridge), this was the lingua franca of teaching and research, so any abstract concept being worked on at St Andrews would tend to be explained in terms of it. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would think that a hit marked 'citation' is just that - the paper is about something else but cites Napier88. I could be wrong. I would think a section or whatever in Ron Morrison's article would be the best procedure, leaving this title as a redirect. Peridon (talk) 20:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: From the looks of that manual, maintenance/updating of the language seems to have resumed sometime around the mid-1990s, for a time at least. Ceannlann gorm (talk) 21:32, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"It seems to be a dead language (mostly exclusive use to St Andrews it seems), so there's little likelihood of it reaching notability"
Why? You seem to think that notability is dependent upon both global scope, and upon currency. Neither is true. Neither is St Andrews (especially for CompSci) the equivalent of East Podunk State College. Would you delete Smalltalk because "Not used much outside PARC"? Andy Dingley (talk) 22:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Andy Dingley: Nice hatchet job there, cutting off the rest of my sentence. Try reading it one more time:

It seems to be a dead language (mostly exclusive use to St Andrews it seems), so there's little likelihood of it reaching notability if it doesn't have it now.

― Padenton|✉   00:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I read it alright, just didn't reckon much to your argument. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Andy Dingley: Clearly not, as your response to it makes no sense whatsoever. ― Padenton|✉   16:16, 7 April 2015 (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.
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