Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pawn (scripting language)

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 delete. sources win AFDs - or lack thereof... Spartaz ^Humbug! 20:55, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Pawn (scripting language)

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Fails WP:GNG. Unable to find any news source coverage, only covered on gaming forums and the creators website. ― Padenton|✉ 21:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. ― Padenton|✉ 21:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. ― Padenton|✉ 21:40, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. ― Padenton|✉ 21:40, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Netherlands-related deletion discussions. ― Padenton|✉ 21:40, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The article at least tries to make a case for notability. Not sure if it holds up to scrutiny, have to look further into it. —Ruud 11:46, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
~~Delete~~, no requested 3rd party references at all since October, 2013. SPA creation, editor not seen since 2011. –Be..anyone (talk) 19:48, 1 April 2015 (UTC) Switched to keep after Caroliano improved the page notably (pun intended.) –Be..anyone (talk) 01:06, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep This language is used in the real world: http://www.compuphase.com/pawn/pawnprojects.htm

Also, it was covered in Dr. Dobbs, under it's previous name: http://www.drdobbs.com/the-small-scripting-language/184411074 Caroliano (talk) 01:48, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I quickly found those two links. I will post more references latter, as they don't seem sufficient. But searching "small" on google will probably be quite difficult. Caroliano (talk) 06:37, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Back. First, another reliable third party source, but not as in depth as the drdobbs article:

Pawn is described (a section with 3 paragraphs) in Game Engine Architecture, Second Edition by by Jason Gregory, on page 962, as one of the commonly used scripting languages for games. One can get the page via google books. Amazon Link.
I don't know if a moderately big and notable open source project counts as a reliable source, but: Embryo interprets a subset of Small and is used in Enlightenment_(software). This can also be confirmed by checking it is a package which e17 depends on all major Linux distros.

Now, more questionable evidence for notability:

Besides Small, Pawn and Embryo, another name related to the language is SourcePawn. You will also find hundreds of forum posts, wikis, websites, youtube tutorials, job recruitments, github repositories (more than 400, but most sourcepawn projects don't seem to have a github repository, as it is used by non-programmers. Pure Pawn has 183 repositories), etc, about it. There are more than 2500 plugins written for sourcemod alone, presumably in SourcePawn. They now seem to be developing an more modern version of SourcePawn (this Feb 04, 2015 17:51 news that I can't get a link of, Transitional Syntax).
It is covered not only in gamming related forums (and blogs, wikis, youtube, etc) but also at a lesser degree as an embedded language (plus the projects in the compuphase website).
One IDEs was developed especially for it: PAWN Studio. The last version has 35k downloads on sourceforge, 102 of those this week.
Compuphase claims that it was used as a scripting language in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance that is a notable game, but I can't find a reliable source on that.
And there is some criticism of pawn, explaining why it isn't more used nowadays. Only the second link is remotely usable though. Compuphase seems to have abandoned the language and it's main implementation. But the forks are still alive.

That is what I could find, but I'm not on the gamming modding community. Caroliano (talk) 23:39, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - not seeing significant, in-depth coverage from independent and reliable sources. Neutrality^talk 16:04, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Maybe listing this deletion discussion under games category could bring people who know how to search references for game modding, that seems one of the main uses of this language, if they are not still enough. Caroliano (talk) 23:44, 5 April 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, Nakon 02:44, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Notability where? Self-published (creator's website) references only. Clear fail of WP:NSOFTWARE. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:47, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus:: please look at the article again. I included some of the sources I listed above in the discussion, among other additions. Caroliano (talk) 00:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - The project is not commonly updated, but still alive. the last update was made in January 2015 Ikkentim (talk) 20:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
keep per Caroliano. Christian75 (talk) 21:32, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment/keep - The language is recognized by the language detection on github. 188 repositories which are mainly written in PAWN are hosted on github. Most of them seem to be related to the SA-MP game modification. I know I don't have much reasons to say keep, but still I think we should. Ikkentim (talk) 13:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget the almost 500 repositories listed under SourcePawn, another recognized language by Github, that I linked in my vote. Caroliano (talk) 00:24, 13 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.