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.
non-notable software, some mentions found, but no in-depth, reliable sources Deunanknute (talk) 01:04, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
keep per new ref's Deunanknute (talk) 03:00, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Phantomjs" should redirect to "PhantomJS" which I was about to do but noticed the nomination for deletion. PhantomJS is widely used with millions of downloads, many dependent utilities, tools adhering to its APIs, and with many different use cases. I don't see how it is any less notable than software like Ember.js or Selenium (Software). Jsoverson (talk) 01:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have any independent, reliable sources? Deunanknute (talk) 01:26, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am confident I can find any source that is required, but I wasn't sure what types of information should be included. There are videos recorded and books written about PhantomJS but I wasn't sure if those come off as promotional (none are by me). Large companies use phantom but it's often messages and comments by their employees that indicate it. Downloads, usage and activity are all high but i'm not sure how much should be added since that data is out of date as soon as it is included. Jsoverson (talk) 01:33, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Software is notable if it meets any one of these criteria:
The software is discussed in reliable sources as significant in its particular field. References that cite trivia do not fulfill this requirement. See following section for more information.
The software is the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs. This criterion does not apply to software merely used in instruction.
The software is the subject of multiple printed third party manuals, instruction books, or reliable reviews,[1] written by independent authors and published by independent publishers.
It is published software that has been recognized as having historical or technical significance by reliable sources. However, the mere existence of reviews does not mean the software is notable. Reviews must be significant, from a reliable source, and/or assert notability.
^Notability, not existence, must be established by such citations without using WP:Synthesis.
Deunanknute (talk) 01:55, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To comply with (3) I added a section with an article& books written about and referencing PhantomJS. I can mention my own book "Developing Web Components" which has a portion on unit testing web components with phantomjs but I expect that to be considered a conflict of interest. Jsoverson (talk) 02:16, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of verifiability/reliability, I don't completely trust O'Reilly published works, and I don't trust Packt. The Threatpost and Stanford references don't contain any depth on the software, just a mention. The current sources are ok for citing facts, but they don't establish notability. Is there any in depth coverage from more reliable sources (book from a major publisher, article/review in a reputable magazine/website, etc)? Are there multiple schools with classes on it, not just that use it? Deunanknute (talk) 03:39, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
PhantomJS is the first of its kind that gained substantial usage and was the most viable, capable option for the past ~4 years. It has nearly 1m downloads last month from Npm_(software) alone (which isn't the primary download source, just the only number i could easily find). Other headless browsers targeting other rendering engines have come about (SlimerJS for Firefox/Gecko, TrifleJS for IE) and both have adhered to PhantomJS' api due to its fullness, popularity, and effectiveness. It is hard to find reviews of a piece of software that was the sole option for so long, and even when other headless browsers came about they were expected to be used in tandem alongside Phantom as a complement instead of an alternative. That those options also adhered to the exact same API in order to reuse existing scripts shows how notable PhantomJS was in its field. It's not the most exciting thing in the world, but it's very notable for web development testing alone. Add to that the malicious usage, server rendering, and web scraping and it's been a cornerstone in the rise of the web between 2011 & 2015. I'll be gathering more links and references and reaching out to others to do the same. Thanks for the responses so far! Jsoverson (talk) 05:52, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How are the standards for notability applied? The List_of_web_browsers entry has an incredible number of browsers that are obscure[1], have no[2][3], few[4], single-source[5], or non-notable[6] references. PhantomJS has substantial more usage & more references to usage than many of those browsers, despite all being considered 'notable' as judged by the comment in the page source ("This is a list of NOTABLE browsers, as judged by the existence of articles on Wikipedia") even though many entries have substantially fewer resources (certainly no courses on the topic, no books, no print articles, etc). Jsoverson (talk) 21:28, 18 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
notability is applied on a per case basis per WP:OTHERSTUFFXISTS. Basically, just because "Topic A" has an article, doesn't mean a similar "Topic B" should automatically have an article; and just because "Topic C" hasn't been deleted, doesn't mean it won't/can't be. Deunanknute (talk) 22:59, 18 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NORTH AMERICA1000 01:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, sources & edits made since nomination seem sufficient. Personman (talk) 09:07, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
PhantomJS is around 50th most popular software repository in GitHub with 13,000 developers having highlighted as favourite[7], this puts it in the same space as other projects such as Redis, Django, CoffeeScript and Leaflet. In addition, PhantomJS has given rise to a large ecosystem of related projects and several testing frameworks that depend on it[8]. There are probably hundreds of thousands of users out there. --Sdesalas (talk) 02:53, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Please also refer to alternative headless browsers and note that PhantomJS is by far more popular than equivalent projects such as HtmlUnit who already have their own page. In other words, it is notable because it is significant in its specific field (headless browsers, and more specifically - automated testing of web applications). I'm a web developer and there are only two realistic options for automated testing of web applications, you either use Selenium Web Driver or PhantomJS, and only the latter is a true headless browser. Here are some other references from developers with similar experiences[9][10][11][12][13]. --Sdesalas (talk) 03:09, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I just did a quick google check and there are indeed multiple printed third-party manuals on PhantomJS. There is Getting Started with PhantomJS (Packt Publishing, 2013)[14] and PhantomJS Cookbook (Packt Publishing, 2014)[15]. The latter one has 8 reviews. --Sdesalas (talk) 03:24, 23 February 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.