Talk:.dbf

Mike Rozlog

Mike Rozlog here, thanks for the vote of confidence! Since I'm the CEO and we have a lot of customers still using dBASE and dBASE for DOS so the .dbf file format is still very relevant. Actually when you look at what gets search on google the number one thing is .dbf files. That is the reason for the article, we have a lot of people asking questions about .dbf files and I thought my details would be very useful to many people.

Mike Dbasellc (talk) 05:14, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Snowball

@Czarkoff: I feel a bit bitten by your decline message. Fortunately I am no newbie. You might consider using less aggressive wording in your declines.

Regarding notably. I do believe a file format supported by many database systems is independently notable. Did you base your assessment of notability purely on the references currently in the draft or did you do any research of your own to try and establish notability? Both here and in AfD we're primarily trying to assess notability of the subject. Articles on notable subjects should not be rejected or deleted simply because the authors fail to make a good case for notability.

My question about whether you've done any research is not rhetorical. If you have not done the research, I am happy to do it and add some better references to the article. Please respond and let me know. ~KvnG 16:09, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@Kvng: Sorry, I didn't intend to bite you. Of course file format may be individually notable. Still, to pass AfC a draft should readily demonstrate notability, and it is the job of draft's author. I did some research a while ago (when the message was first left at WT:WikiProject Computing), and I did not find anything I could add back then. May be you'll be luckier, or just more patient. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 19:56, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@Czarkoff: I've added a couple references in the new Further reading section. This is a historic topic so the internet is probably not the first place to look for sources. I think this demonstrates significant coverage in multiple reliable source. Does this sufficiently improve expected outcome at AfD for you? ~KvnG 20:58, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@Kvng: Sorry, but I don't really think that these additions constitute significant coverage, particularily for establishing separate notability. I don't think that coverage of "Encyclopedia of Microcomputers" constitutes significant coverage due to its size and depth; encyclopedias are tretiary sources, so strictly speaking this source does not contribute to passing WP:GNG at all. "Visualizing Data", if page 326 does not contain more substantial description of the format (unlikely, judging on context), also does not cover the subject in significant detail.

FWIW I don't think that notability problem is the biggest problem here currently. Most of material from Level 5 DOS Headers section and below violates WP:NOTMANUAL; it belongs to some technical journal, website or other special-purpose medium.

I really believe that this content is not worth preservation. Instead, if you are interested in development of this topic on Wikipedia, I would suggest to improve the coverage of this format at Dbase § File formats, so that eventually it could be split from Dbase article. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 22:36, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

We need to focus on notability because, assuming there aren't any copyright or BLP issues, the goal here at AfC is get articles on notable topics into mainspace where they can be improved. If you believe the quality of an article needs to meet a certain threshold before acceptance, that's something we should work through at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation.

WP:SIGCOV does not a specific size or depth, it merely requires that the coverage is not "trivial". WP:TERTIARY sources are usually considered excellent evidence of notability. You don't seem to have evaluated the Library of Congress reference. ~KvnG 23:47, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I missed the LoC reference, and I find it a strong one. As to WP:SIGCOV, it requires that the source "addresses the topic directly and in detail", and I don't see much detail in short passages from these books. (It is not my personal preference, but well-established practice: see this recent AfD for example.) Down two bullets GNG says '"Sources" should be secondary sources', so considering tretiary sources, particularily so narrow in their scope, as proof of notability is direct violation of this guideline. Yes, AfC process has some local, relaxed understanding of notability concept, and that is why so many articles from AfC get ultimately deleted. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 00:09, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Regarding your dismissal of my WP:NOTMANUAL concerns: according to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions § Step 3: Suitability reviewer is supposed to verify draft's conformance to WP:NOT. This particular draft fails in this regard; it just should not be accepted before this flow is fixed. The lenient approach to such issues already led to numerous deletion of articles on pretty prominent encyclopedic topics, and the only reason AfC process exists is to help novice editors avoid getting into such situation. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 00:28, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this is possibly notable. A secondary RS found is dBASE Table File Format (DBF) at the Library of Congress digital preservation project. It has a nice summary and some history. Mention of the Xbase clone file format may be warranted, too. The best ref I know for that is pointed to by the LoC link above: Xbase File Format Description. --Mark viking (talk) 20:31, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@Mark viking: The LoC ref is already in the draft. Feel free add discussion of the Xbase clone format. ~KvnG 21:05, 8 August 2014 (UTC)