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. There's a consensus here that the subject itself is notable. If there are any WP:HOWTO issues, which seems unlikely from the discussion, they can be dealt with through the normal editing process. Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is functions (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Wikipedia is not how-to content. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:17, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Wikipedia is not a software instruction manual. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 15:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 17:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete no notability, WP is not a how-to guide. OSborn^arf_{contributionatoration} 17:44, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

---

• Delete, with the hope that someone finds a use for it elsewhere. Content is OK, but it fails WP:HOWTO for hosting here. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Still delete, despite lobbying on my talk page.

    This is a HOWTO. It has no encyclopedic content beyond a straight reproduction of the language reference manual. There is no context outside the MS VB family, no discussion of how undef, Null or NaN are evaluated by comparable tests in other languages. The scope is unencyclopedically narrow, focussing only on how to achieve one task, on one platfrom. Fortunately it's not as uselessly patronising as the MSDN article, but that's just MSDN for you. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    • What an absurd nonsense of a rationale. Deletion policy doesn't say that articles should be deleted because they don't happen to cover quite unrelated subjects in the same field, or because they are about specific computer language families, or even because (Oh, the very idea!) an encyclopaedia article tells the reader what can be found in another reference work. (Indeed, deletion policy is quite clear about the reverse of the latter point.) I was hoping that you'd notice that you were talking about an article that had changed at the very time that you wrote your rationale, with a simple nudge and a pointer to things that actually are how-tos (which contrast quite markedly with this), but instead you are clinging to a previously formed conclusion in despite of such things. And it's not even as if you truly believe that language-specific articles whose content can also be found in reference manuals shouldn't exist, as evident from the fact that you aren't objecting to math.h and its ilk. Your taking the holding of a previously considered conclusion at AFD to be more important than the actual betterment of the encyclopaedia, with content about a subject that it didn't heretofore cover anywhere, is rather disappointing, I have to say. It's certainly not what encyclopaedia writing is about. Uncle G (talk) 02:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment content has been substantially improved from what I saw but it still is essential a HOWTO and just a rehash of information already available from MSDN. OSborn^arf_{contributionatoration} 21:47, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't bend the policy out of shape to prevent changing an AFD rationale. That's putting the cart entirely before the horse. One thing that how tos have, that isn't in the article before us, is instructional content telling someone step-by-step how to do something. Policy is quite clear that what it is talking about is instructional and tutorial material. This article here is an actual programmers' how to, for reference and contrast with the encyclopaedia article before us, which contains not a single step-by-step instruction and no tutorials of any form (unlike this which was mostly instructional), and is purely reference material sourced, by and large, from reference books, some of which even say "reference" in their titles. Uncle G (talk) 21:58, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The applicable policies are probably WP:N and WP:NOTHOWTO point 4. On the face of it, the subject matter has the multiple non-trivial references satisfying notability. The article presents as information rather than as "textbooks, with leading questions and systematic problem solutions as examples" and so good argument can be made that it satisfies the NOTHOWTO advice. And though I can kinda see reasons for not wanting to dissect in minute detail on wikipedia every software platform, I'm persuaded by NOTHOWTO's "Other kinds of examples, specifically those intended to inform rather than to instruct, may be appropriate for inclusion in a Wikipedia article", the quality of the subject article, and the fact that it discusses the function in the context of a range of platforms. I suspect, however, that other non-microsoft platforms have is functions and thus that we're seeing only a subset of the information one might expect to inhabit the is function namespace. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC) & again at --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:19, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • That is almost trivial to address, since we already have the others elsewhere. And, funnily enough, there's not a peep raised there about the idea that discussion of sets of standard library functions, in other families of computer programming languages, is a "how-to". That's because the whole "It's a how-to." idea is pretty much a red herring. Uncle G (talk) 23:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Excellent. You are allowed to vote keep, should you wish, Uncle G. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:19, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is a discussion, not a vote. It's the actual rationales that count, not how many times someone happens to use boldface. Uncle G (talk) 02:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Undecided: When I first saw this, my eyes glazed over. There are just 11 or 12 concepts for the whole article. But there are 27 citations, 15 sources, 7 further readings, and a 6 by 6 summary table. This brings to mind WP:LINKFARM, except it is done much more elegantly than most spammers. The article does not contain a more in-depth treatment than the sources (History of IsNull anyone?), nor is the information presented in a new way, nor is it any more convenient than anything else published. It is guilty of WP:REHASH, except no one has written that guideline—which is probably a legitimate function of an encyclopedia anyway. The existence of the article seems wrong somehow. It could be saved by having a purpose: more depth, better context, or some contrast to something related. It is effectively one big WP:TRIVIA section. —EncMstr (talk) 19:25, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Well within scope, as a general introduction to the subject. The material cannot be presented without some degree of technical detail. It's unusual for us to have such thorough sourcing for an article like this, but its good when someone is prepared to take the trouble. (Uncle G, I think you are perhaps excessively optimistic about the care that people closing discussions will always take; and we have no way of determining which arguments are good except by seeing the consensus on them.) DGG ( talk ) 06:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The topic passes Wikipedia:Notability and does not violate any policies or guidelines. Proponents of deletion primarily cite the policy WP:NOTHOWTO. WP:NOTHOWTO states inter alia that "Other kinds of examples, specifically those intended to inform rather than to instruct, may be appropriate for inclusion in a Wikipedia article." This rationale was applicable when the article was first nominated for deletion. The remarkable rescue performed by Jonathan de Boyne Pollard (talk · contribs) firmly places the article in the category of informing. Though some sentences in the article instruct, this can be addressed through editing. Cunard (talk) 07:10, 26 January 2011 (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.